2 BACTERIA IN DAILY LIFE 



endowed with functions of such responsibility and 

 importance as suggested by Latour. 



At the time when Latour sowed the first seeds 

 of this great gospel of fermentation, started curi- 

 ously almost simultaneously across the Rhine by 

 Schwann and Kiitzing, its greatest subsequent 

 apostle and champion was but a schoolboy, ex- 

 hibiting nothing more than a schoolboy's truant 

 love of play and distaste for lessons. Louis 

 Pasteur was only a lad of fifteen, buried in a 

 little town in the provinces of France, whose peace 

 of mind was certainly not disturbed, or likely to 

 be, by rumours of any scientific discussion, how- 

 ever momentous, carried on in the great, far-distant 

 metropolis. Yet, some thirty and odd years later, 

 there was not a country in the whole world where 

 Pasteur's name was not known and associated with 

 those classical investigations on fermentation, in 

 the pursuit of which he spent so many- years of his 

 life., and which have proved of such incalculable 

 benefit to the world of commerce as well as 

 science. 



Thanks to Pasteur, we are no longer in doubt 

 as to the nature of yeast cells ; so familiar, in fact, 

 have we become with them, that at the dawn of 

 the twentieth century we are able to select at will 

 those particular varieties for which we have a 

 predilection, and employ those which will produce 



