144 LETTER-FILES OF S. W. JOHNSON 



own legislature to $40,000 and until we get a little more done 

 at home, I fear I shall have to be busy here. . . . 



[1860] Why were you not at the Association? I wanted 

 to gossip with you about a plan for making a series of experi- 

 ments on ag. practice with manures and a project for getting 

 10 or 15000 dollars from Congress to do it with, etc. etc. . . . 



We here, with imperfect organization, over head and ears 

 in debt, with buildings half finished and only 100 students, 

 have consumed annually about $400 worth of apparatus and 

 reagents — no purely literary man could see the use of all 

 that expenditure, and hence it could not be made through 

 him. I found Dr. Voelcker at Cirencester, calling on a parson 

 president to approve of a change in the structure of a sand 

 bath!! — and Dr. Schultz in Berlin working an agl. class in 

 a garret because the great University had too many uses for 

 its money to give him more room ! ! ! — Hohenheim, and Pop- 

 pelsdorf and Tharandt owe most of their efficiency to their 

 standing alone. . . . 



[1862] The Washington folks are still talking about the 

 Agl. Dept. and writing to me about it. I laid out a plan for 

 them that will take $100,000 to start upon. I don't expect 

 they will get more done than talk this winter. The bill as 

 reported, is a humbug, but it may be made something of yet. 

 I shall say more about this again. The agl. dept. is doing noth- 

 ing and I fear it will fizzle out if something is not done. . . . 

 It is a scientific and not a practical man that is wanted there. 



[1864] We have had a long hard fight on the Land Grant 

 Fund — we have outflanked the enemy and spiked all his guns, 

 but the infernal guerrillas still hover around in the shape of 

 anonymous correspondents, etc. I still have some fears, 

 though they are very much allayed. 



Professor F. H. Storer occupied in Massachusetts a 

 position analogous in many ways to that held in Con- 

 necticut by Professor Johnson. On the founding, in 



