1880—1882 93 



any surroundings with knowledge of his subject and a winning 

 grace of manner. When he entered the laboratory, he was at 

 once charmed by the simplicity of the scientist, who hastened 

 to accept the proposal of an extensive experiment. 



At the end of April, Pasteur wrote out the programme which 

 was to be followed near Melun at the farm of Pouilly le Fort. 

 M. Rossignol had a number of copies of that programme 

 printed, and distributed them, not only throughout the Depart- 

 ment of Seine et Marne, but in the whole agricultural world. 

 This programme was so decidedly affirmative that some one said 

 to Pasteur, with a little anxiety : " You remember what 

 Marshal Gouyion St. Cyr said of Napoleon, that ' he liked 

 hazardous games with a character of grandeur and audacity.' 

 It was neck or nothing with him ; you are going on in the same 

 way! " 



'Yes," answered Pasteur, who meant to compel a victory. 



And as his collaborators, to whom he had just read the precise 

 and strict arrangements he had made, themselves felt a little 

 nervous, he said to them, " What has succeeded in the labora- 

 tory on fourteen sheep will succeed just as well at Melun on 

 fifty." 



This programme left him no retreat. The Melun Agricul- 

 tural Society put sixty sheep at Pasteur's disposal ; twenty-five 

 were to be vaccinated by two inoculations, at twelve or fifteen 

 days' interval, with some attenuated charbon virus. Some 

 days later those twenty-five and also twenty-five others would 

 be inoculated with some very virulent charbon culture. 



' The twenty-five unvaccinated sheep will all perish," wrote 

 Pasteur, 'the twenty-five vaccinated ones will survive." 

 They would afterwards be compared with the ten sheep which 

 had undergone no treatment at all. It would thus be seen that 

 vaccination did not prevent sheep from returning to their 

 normal state of health after a certain time. 



Then came other prescriptions, for instance, the burying of 

 the dead sheep in distinct graves, near each other and enclosed 

 within a paling. 



" In May, 1882," added Pasteur, " twenty new sheep, that 

 is, sheep never before used for experimentation, will be shut 

 within that paling." 



And he predicted that the following year, 1882, out of those 

 twenty-five sheep fed on the grass of that little enclosure or en 

 forage deposited there, several would become infected by the - 



