STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 105 



exposure of frauds in fertilizers, and resulted in his 

 appointment as chemist to the Society. Since his first 

 official ''Report as Chemist," made to the Connecticut 

 State Agricultural Society on January 12, 1858, 

 together with similar work done by him in preceding 

 years without official authority, summarized in his 

 address, ''Frauds in Commercial Manures," delivered 

 before the same society in January 1857, is often 

 referred to as the commencement of the Agricultural 

 Experiment Station movement in this country, it is 

 of interest to bring together here some facts concern- 

 ing Mr. Johnson's connection with the early growth 

 of that idea. 



An article — "County Agricultural Institutes" — 

 published during his student days in New Haven, in 

 August 1851, sets forth in a general way his earliest 

 conception of ideas which later assumed a more definite 

 form. This larger vision of the usefulness of chem- 

 istry to agriculture came to him before his opportu- 

 nity to perform the clearly needed, but much narrower, 

 work of fertilizer analysis. It was thoroughly char- 

 acteristic of the man first to form and tenaciously hold 

 the broad idea, based upon a universal and permanent 

 need'; and then, realizing an opportunity for practical 

 work, to set about using his skill and knowledge in 

 routine analysis performed with all possible accuracy 

 in order that these simple analyses should be so abso- 

 lutely right that they might be an unassailable foun- 

 dation for the wider work to come after. In March 

 1853, he published, under the title "Superphosphate 

 of Lime," an account of the results of analyses which 

 he had made on two samples of artificial fertilizer 

 offered for sale. This paper is the prototype of the 



