x.] BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS. 249 



what smiles and shrugs, practical and serious contempo- 

 raries of Eedi and of Spallanzani may have commented 

 on the waste of their high abilities in toiling at the 

 solution of problems which, though curious enough in 

 themselves, could be of no conceivable utility to 

 mankind. 



Nevertheless, you will have observed that before we 

 had travelled very far upon our road, there appeared, 

 on the right hand and on the left, fields laden with 

 a harvest of golden grain, immediately convertible into 

 those things which the most solidly practical men will 

 admit to have value viz., money and life. 



The direct loss to France caused by the Pebrine in 

 seventeen years cannot be estimated at less than fifty 

 millions sterling ; and if we add to this what Bedi's idea, 

 in Pasteur's hands, has done for the wine-grower and for 

 the vinegar-maker, and try to capitalize its value, we 

 shall find that it will go a long way towards repairing 

 the money losses caused by the frightful and calamitous 

 war of this autumn. And as to the equivalent of Kedi's 

 thought in life, how can we over-estimate the value of 

 that knowledge of the nature of epidemic and epizootic 

 diseases, and consequently of the means of checking, or 

 eradicating, them, the dawn of which has assuredly 

 commenced 1 



Looking back no further than ten years, it is possible 

 to select three (1863, 1864, and 1869) in which the total 

 number of deaths from scarlet- fever alone amounted to 

 ninety thousand. That is the return of killed, the 

 maimed and disabled being left out of sight. Why, it is 

 to be hoped that the list of killed in the present bloodiest 

 of all wars will not amount to more than this ! But 

 the facts which I have placed before you must leave 

 the least sanguine without a doubt that the nature 

 and the causes of this scourge will, one day, be as well 



