1880—1882 305 



and in so doing risk their lives, for they become infected, some- 

 what in the same manner as in the experiments when their 

 forage was poisoned with a few drops of splenic culture liquid. 

 Septic germs are brought to the surface of the soil in the same 

 way. 



'* Animals," said Pasteur, ''should never be buried in 

 fields intended for pasture or the growing of hay. When- 

 ever it is possible, burying-grounds should be chosen in sandy 

 or chalky soils, poor, dry, and unsuitable to the life of earth- 

 worms.'' 



Pasteur, like a general with only two aides de camp, was 

 obliged to direct the efforts of Messrs. Chamberland and Roux 

 simultaneously in different parts of France. Sometimes facts 

 had to be checked which had been over-hastily announced by 

 rash experimentalists. Thus M. Roux went, towards the ena 

 of the month of July, to an isolated property near Nancy, called 

 Bois de Due Farm, to ascertain whether the successive deaths 

 of nineteen head of cattle were really, as affirmed, due to 

 splenic fever. The water of this pasture was alleged to be 

 contaminated; the absolute isolation of the herd seemed to 

 exclude all idea of contagion. After collecting water and 

 earth from various points on the estate M. Roux had returned 

 to the laboratory with his tubes and pipets. He was much 

 inclined to believe that there had been septicasmia and not 

 splenic fever. 



M. Chamberland was at Savagna, near Lons-le-Saulnier, 

 where, in order to experiment on the contamination of the sur- 

 face of pits, he had had a little enclosure traced out and 

 surrounded by an open paling in a meadow where victims of 

 splenic fever had been buried two years previously. Four 

 sheep were folded in this enclosure. Another similar fold, also 

 enclosing four sheep, was placed a few yards above the first 

 one. This experiment was intended to occupy the vacation, 

 and Pasteur meant to watch it from Arbois. 



A great sorrow awaited him there. "I have just had the 

 misfortune of losing my sister,'' he wrote to Nisard at the 

 beginning of August, "to see whom (as also my parents' and 

 children's graves) I returned yearly to Arbois. Within forty- 

 eight hours I witnessed life, sickness, death and burial; such 

 rapidity is terrifying. I deeply loved my sister, who, in diffi- 

 cult times, when modest ease even did not reign in our home, 

 carried the h«avy burden of the day and devoted herself to the 



