220 LETTER-FILES OF S. W. JOHNSON 



ago, at a time of drought in England, one of the Steamship 

 Cos. took American hay to fill up their ships, on their own 

 speculation, and could only dispose of it at a heavy loss in 

 London and Liverpool. The talk was then that our hay was 

 too coarse to suit the English eye, but it looks now as if J. B. 's 

 "prejudice" was not so dunderheaded as it then seemed. I 

 have always wondered at the difference between the require- 

 ments of our hay markets and those of England. It is not so 

 strange, perhaps, that coarse hay commands a higher price 

 than fine here, so long as danthonia is abundant, but it is 

 curious that we despise really good fine hay when the English 

 will buy no other. Ten years ago I tried to get one of our 

 agricultural societies to import merchantable samples of Eng- 

 lish hay to be exhibited at our cattle fairs, but nothing ever 

 came of the idea. 



By the way, — I speak with reservation since I have never 



seen the man, — but it did seem to me that you handle — 



too gently; or rather that you pat him much too gently on 

 the back. Thought needs to be given to the devising of meth- 

 ods of allaying the bumptiousness of some of our practical 

 men — and I am clear that praise (no matter how damnably 

 "faint" it may be) is not a means to this end. It needs to 

 be shown that for successful research something more than 

 good intentions is necessary; viz, technical training, modesty 

 of thought, and an open mind. 



I am glad you hold your "luff" in respect to the conven- 

 tional method of stating analyses of fodder. There is no sense 

 in trying to refine this thing beyond the possibly practical. 

 We are hardly more ripe than Einhof and Sprengel were for 

 the complete analysis of rough fodders, and there is a sem- 

 blance of (let us say ignorance) in holding up the 



names of too many chemicals to the gaze of the great and 

 unsoaked public. It is bad enough to have to report the "fat" 

 of hay as if it were really oil. 



I am glad, too, to see you hold off from Kiihn's reactionary 



