CoLENSO. — Presidential Address. 139 



Infirmary in 1865. Having been led to trace microbes as the 

 origin not only of fei^mentation and putrefaction, but of a 

 vast array of destructive blights happening to plants and 

 animals — vines, silkworms, birds, cattle, and mankind — Pas- 

 teur was forced to take up the question, as of supreme 

 importance, " Whence came these microbes, and what are 

 their antecedents ? " We are sometimes told, " from warmth 

 and moisture " — and this, too, in scientific journals of 1895, 

 under the more learned name, perhaps, of " abiogenesis," or 

 the fortuitous concourse of atoms ! Without wasting words 

 to prove theoretically that while stones falling together may, 

 as we all believe they have actually done, make a solar system 

 with a habitable planet or planets, they cannot make a man, or 

 a microbe, or an organic cell, with its property of heredity. 

 Pasteur set about practically to trace the antecedents of every 

 microbe he met with ; and he found for it in every case a 

 living thing, whether in the air, or in water, or in earth. 

 During nearly all the latter part of his life, and to the end, 

 Pasteur devoted himself to biological research, and to vigorous 

 practical realisation of its benefits for the world. And we 

 here, in this far-off colony, are receiving benefits from Pas- 

 teur's labours and discoveries. I have felt constrained to 

 say these few words in honour of that great chemist and 

 biologist. 



And now for a few words respecting some of the higher 

 scientific discoveries of the past year. To this subject, how- 

 ever, I can only make very scanty allusions; but this is a small 

 matter, as you have already heard of them from better-informed 

 sources. 



Probably the discovery of a second gas as a component in 

 our common atmospheric air stands pre-eminent. I allude to 

 helium ; its great ally being argon, also lately discovered by 

 Lord Eayleigh. Then there is anti-toxin, as a remedy in cer- 

 tain forms of severe disease ; and more lately the curious and 

 highly-important discovery by Professor Eontgen of photo- 

 graphic rays, or the " new light," by which near objects un- 

 seen by mortal eye, through their being imbedded and hidden 

 in opaque bodies, are made clearly visible. This interesting 

 discovery, which is likely to become very serviceable in some 

 cases of surgery, has already attained a high position in the 

 medical world, especially on the Continent of Europe. Indeed, 

 we are continually receiving notices from abroad of fresh and 

 further useful and surprising discoveries being made in this 

 direction. I shall be able to show you a plate as an object- 

 lesson representing its operation, which will cause it to be the 

 more readily understood. But I do not exactly fall in with the 

 statement so commonly made in connection with this import- 

 ant discovery — that the camera of the photographer can now 



