1880—1882 81 



an interest in laboratory research, he sent to his friend Nisard 

 the number of the Bulletin of the Academie de Medecine 

 which contained a first communication on chicken-cholera, and 

 also his paper on the plague. 



"Read them if you have time," he wrote (May 3, 1880) : 

 " they may interest you, and there should be no blanks in your, 

 education. They will be followed by others. 



' To-day at the Institute, and to-morrow at the Academie de 

 Medecine, I shall give a new lecture. 



1 ' Do repeat to me every criticism you hear ; I much prefer 

 them to praise, barren unless encouragement is wanted, which 

 is certainly not my case ; I have a lasting provision of faith and 

 fire." 



Nisard answered on May 7 : " My very dear friend, I am 

 almost dazed with the effort made by my ignorance to follow 

 your ideas, and dazzled with the beauty of your discoveries on 

 the principal point, and the number of secondary discoveries 

 enumerated in your marvellous paper. You are right not to 

 care for barren praise ; but you would wrong those who love 

 you if you found no pleasure in being praised by them when 

 they have no other means of acknowledging your notes. 



' I am reading the notice on chicken-cholera for the second 

 time, and I observe that the writer is following the discoverer, 

 and that your language becomes elevated, supple and coloured, 

 in order to express the various aspects of the subject. 



" It gives me pleasure to see the daily growth of your fame, 

 and 1 am indeed proud of enjpying your friendship." 



Amidst his researches on a vaccine for chicken-cholera, the 

 etiology of splenic fever was unceasingly preoccupying Pasteur. 

 Did the splenic germs return to the surface of the soil, and 

 how? One day, in one of his habitual excursions with Messrs. 

 Roux and Chamberland to the farm of St. Germain, near 

 Chartres, he suddenly perceived an answer to that enigma. 

 In a field recently harvested, he noticed a place where the 

 colour of the soil differed a little from the neighbouring earth. 

 He questioned M. Maunoury, the proprietor of the farm, who 

 answered that sheep dead of anthrax had been buried there the 

 preceding year. Pasteur drew nearer, and was interested by 

 the mass of little earth cylinders, those little twists which earth- 

 worms deposit on the ground. Might that be, he wondered, 

 the explanation of the origin of the germs which reappear on 

 the surface? Might not the worms, returning from their sub- 



