120 LETTER-FILES OF S. W. JOHNSON 



tiou to ]Mr. Johnson. We owe it to his interest in agricultural 

 development and to the unusual facilities which his connection 

 with the chemical and agricultural department of Yale College 

 furnishes him, that we have secured so much. The State Soci- 

 ety can not afford to lose the honor and reward of carrying out 

 these investigations in the future on a greatly extended scale. 

 With fraudulent or inferior manures we shall have little to 

 do henceforth if we continue to employ a chemist; and if the 

 State Society can not from its own fund continue and increase 

 the chemical grant, it is much to be desired that by private 

 subscription it should be done. Connecticut cannot afford to 

 give up this measure which has already in our own country 

 and abroad given her signal honor. . . . 



This report of Professor Johnson made a pro- 

 found impression among those interested in agricul- 

 tural matters. While an amplification of earlier work, 

 adapting to American needs methods already in use 

 in England, it was original in many ways; and the 

 personal note it struck persistently, though with 

 modesty and ^vholly without self-consciousness, is 

 interesting to look back upon. This personal rela- 

 tion between the man who ^vas trjdng to help and pro- 

 tect others through his knowdedge and the hearers who 

 believed him, and trusted in his honesty and sincerity 

 quite as much as in his knowledge, never changed. 

 They -were ready first to learn from him and then to 

 join with him in the w^ork; and to the end of their lives 

 he and his early friends in the Agricultural Society 

 labored together, under changing conditions, for the 

 public good. 



In 1859, the delivery of a course of lectures in Wash- 

 ington (before the Smithsonian Institution) on '* Agri- 

 cultural Chemistry" gave Professor Johnson a wider 



