BELFiST 



NATURAL HISTORY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, 



SESSION 1887—88. 



yth November, i< 



The President, Professor E. A. Letts, Ph.D., F.R.S.E., 



F.C.S., gave an Address on 



PASTEUR'S LIFE AND RESEARCHES. 



The President said that Louis Pasteur was born on December 

 27th 1822, in a town in France not very far from the Swiss 

 frontier. His father had served in the army, and on his retire- 

 ment started business as a tanner. There was nothing of special 

 importance to note in the boyhood of Pasteur. Like all young 

 people he preferred the very healthy instinct of play to work, 

 and it was not an unknown event for him to go a fishing when 

 he ought to have been at school. He also appeared to have had 

 a love for the pencil, and many of his sketches and caricatures 

 are still to be seen. There was, in fact, one old lady who 

 knew M. Pasteur as a boy, and who thought he quite missed 

 his vocation in life, and that he would have done much better 

 if he had been an artist. With increasing years, however, young 

 Pasteur settled down to his school work, and it was at the 

 College of Besancon that his chemical instincts first showed 

 themselves. At the age of twenty Pasteur successfully passed 

 the examination for entrance to the Ecole Normale. Here M. 

 Pasteur's career as an experimenter really commenced, and he 

 could have been ever, found at this time in the midst of those 

 researches the issue of which might be heard of in every civilised 



