178 LETTER-FILES OF S. W. JOHNSON 



your stress of work. Davenport Fisher (now of Milwaukee) 

 expatiated to me last autumn in the warmest terms of the 

 good you were doing at the west through your Tribune 

 articles. Speaking of PoOj, I have been impressed of late 

 by the personal knack required to get good results, or rather, 

 I have encountered two or three analysts otherwise good, who 

 perversely insisted in dragging down MgO in their double 

 phosphate of MgONH^, while the rest of us were making 

 excellent weather with the same reagents and with the same 

 "light." I have noticed also repeatedly that in presence of 

 a large excess of Na2S04 the yellow phosphomolybdic ppt. is 

 often fearfully sluggish, and can be moved only by an enor- 

 mous excess of the precipitant. Yrs, F. H. Storer. 



After the exchange of several letters ^\dth Professor 

 Italo Giglioli, later director of the Agricultural Exper- 

 iment Station at Rome, arrangements were concluded 

 for the translation into Italian of ''How Crops Grow." 

 On April 9, 1875, Professor Giglioli wrote : 



I need not tell you how glad I will be if the Italian edition 

 of "How Crops Grow" contain your latest additions and 

 corrections. ... I see with pleasure that you take interest 

 in the progress of the Agricultural Sciences in Italy. Our 

 Agricultural Stations are as yet very young, and have not 

 yet taken that practical turn which is so necessary in order 

 to render them accessible and acceptable to the class of Agri- 

 culturists in general ; it is to be hoped that gradually they 

 will adapt themselves better to the local wants which sur- 

 roimd them. In the United States, where the people have 

 enjoyed for such a long time the blessings of an excellent 

 general education, liberally bestowed on all classes, you can- 

 not have any idea of the difficulties and opposition that sur- 

 round those who want to improve the Agriculture of this 

 country. . . . American Agriculturists ought to take interest 

 in Italian cultivations now that some of these seem to have 



