1860—1864 89 



such researches, had become an imperious necessity; Biot 

 would not be convinced. But Pasteur, in spite of his quasi- 

 filial attachment to Biot, could not stop where he was; he 

 had to go through to the end, 



''You will never find your way out," cried Biot. 



*'I shall try," said Pasteur modestly. 



Angry and anxious, Biot wished Pasteur to promise that 

 lie would relinquish these apparently hopeless researches. 

 J, B. Dumas, to whom Pasteur related the more than dis- 

 couraging remonstrances of Biot, entrenched himself behind 

 this cautious phrase — 



*'I would advise no one to dwell too long on such a subject.*' 



Senarmont alone, full of confidence in the ingenious curiositv 

 of the man who could read nature by dint of patience, said 

 that Pasteur should be allowed his own way. 



It is regrettable that Biot — whose passion for reading was 

 so indefatigable that he complained of not finding enough 

 books in the library at the Institute — should not have thought 

 of writing the history of this question of spontaneous genera- 

 tion. He could have gone back to Aristotle, quoted Lucretius, 

 Virgil, Ovid, Pliny. Philosophers, poets, naturalists, all be- 

 lieved in spontaneous generation. Time went on, and it was 

 Btill believed in. In the sixteenth century, Yan Helmont — ■ 

 who should not be judged by that one instance — gave a cele- 

 brated recipe to create mice : any one could work that prodigy 

 by putting some dirty linen in a receptacle, together with a 

 few grains of wheat or a piece of cheese. Some time later an 

 Italian, Buonanni, announced a fact no less fantastic : certain 

 timberwood, he said, after rotting in the sea, produced worms 

 which engendered butterflies, and those butterflies became 

 birds. 



Another Italian, less credulous, a poet and a physician, 

 Francesco Redi, belonging to a learned society calling itself 

 The Academy of Experience, resolved to carefully study one 

 of those supposed phenomena of spontaneous generation. In 

 order to demonstrate that the worms found in rotten meat 

 did not appear spontaneously, he placed a piece of gauze over 

 the meat. Flies, attracted by the odour, deposited their eggs 

 on the gauze. From those eggs were hatched the worms, 

 which had until then been supposed to begin life spontaneoucly 

 in the flesh itself. This simple experiment marked some prog- 

 ress. Later on another Italian, a medical professor of 



