THE SiLKWOEM-DISEASE. 139 



of the trade all more or less smitten with the evil 

 totally new views might be expected to emerge. "Who 

 can tell, thought Pasteur, whether the prosperity of 

 the silk cultivation may not depend on the practical 

 application of this production of pure eggs by means 

 of moths free from corpuscles ? 



Scarcely had Pasteur made known, first to the 

 Committee of Alais, and then to the Academy of 

 Sciences, the results of his earliest observations and 

 the inductions to which they pointed, when critics 

 without number arose on all sides. It was objected 

 that the labours of several Italian savants had 

 established beyond all doubt that the corpuscles were 

 a normal element of certain worms, and especially of 

 all the moths when old; that other authors had 

 affirmed it to be sufficient to starve certain worms to 

 make these famous corpuscles appear in all their 

 tissues; and that Dr. Gaetano Cantoni had already 

 tried some cultivations with eggs coming from moths 

 without corpuscles, and that he had totally failed. 



' Your efforts will be vain,' wrote the celebrated 

 Italian entomologist Cornalia ; ' your selected eggs will 

 produce healthy worms, but these worms will become 

 sickly through the influence of the epidemic demon 

 which reigns everywhere.' 



Anyone but Pasteur would have been staggered, 

 but he was not the man to allow himself to be dis- 



