270 BIOGENESIS AND ABIOGENESIS vill 



smiles and shrugs, practical and serious contempo- 

 raries of Redi and of Spallanzani may have com- 

 mented on the waste of their high abilities in 

 toiling at the solution of problems which, though 

 curious enough in themselves, could be of no con- 

 ceivable 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 P^brine 

 in seventeen years cannot be estimated at less 

 than fifty millions sterling; and if we add to 

 this what Redi's idea, in Pasteur's hands, has 

 done for the wine-grower and for the vinegar- 

 maker, and try to capitalise 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 Redi'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 eradi- 

 cating them, the dawn of which has assuredly 

 commenced ? 



Looking back no further than ten years, it is 

 possible to select three (1863, 1864, and 1869) in 



