STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 125 



fertilizer that contains but two or three active ingredients, 

 exhausts and temporarily ruins many a soil. But if, where 

 ammonia compounds have nearly run their course and cease 

 to produce remunerative crops, phosphates be applied, it often 

 happens that a good yield is immediately secured; and when 

 phosphates begin to lose their efficacy, sulphates, yea, ' ' legiti- 

 mate plaster" comes in like a panacea, and fertilizes so that 

 experience is astounded. 



The "intelligent farmer" ought to know whether it is sul- 

 phates, phosphates, drainage or tillage, that his crops need; 

 it is not hard now-a-days to learn these things, and knowing 

 it is sulphates, he can speedily decide whether Nova Scotia 

 or Jarvis Island be the cheaper source; if phosphates, the 

 analyses which tell the composition of what is in the market 

 will be his guide ; and henceforth, as heretofore, he will regard, 

 and it is to be hoped, support, his "scientific protector," the 

 State Agricultural Society. 



In the summer of 1856, when Mr. Johnson was 

 appointed professor of analji;ical chemistry in the 

 Yale Scientific School, he found no funds available 

 for books or apparatus — the laboratory was an old 

 dwelling-house in much the condition in w^hich the last 

 tenant left it, unsuited to scientific uses. In addition 

 to the administration of the analytical laboratory, 

 Professor Johnson taught theoretical chemistry, then 

 called "chemical philosophy" — late in 1857, agricul- 

 tural chemistry w^as added to his professorship ; from 

 then on he offered regular instruction in this branch 

 also. The Agricultural Society and the Yale Scien- 

 tific School were still most intimately connected, the 

 chemical and agricultural courses of the school being 

 highly approved by the more progressive lando^vners 

 of the state, and so Professors Porter and Johnson 

 took advantage of the organization of the Agricul- 



