402 Address of Professor Hualey. 
idea, in its long and slow progress from the position of a probable 
hypothesis to that of an established law of nature. Our survey 
has not taken us into very attractive regions ; it has lain, chiefly, 
in a land flowing with the abominable, and peopled with mere 
grubs and mouldiness. And it may be imagined with what smiles 
and shrugs, practical and serious contemporaries of Redi and of 
Spallanzani may have commented on the waste of their high abil- 
ities in toiling at the solution of problems which, though curious 
enough in themselves, could be of no conceivable utility to man- 
kind. Nevertheless you will have observed that before we had 
traveled 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 sordidly 
practical of men will admit to have value, viz: money and life. 
» The direct loss to France caused by the Pébrine 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 capi- 
talise its value, we shall find that it will go a long way towards 
repairing the money losses caused by the frightful and calami- 
tous war of this autumn. And as to the equivalent of Redi’s 
thought in life, how can we over-estimate the value of that knowl- 
e of the nature of epidemic and epizodtic diseases, and con- 
sequently of the means of checking, or eradicating, 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 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 understood as those of 
the Pébrine are now; and that the long-suffered massacre of our 
innocents will come to an end. 
And thus mankind will have one more admonition that “ the 
people perish for lack of knowledge ;” and that the alleviation 
of the miseries, and the promotion of the welfare, of men must 
be sought, by those who will not lose their pains, in that dili- 
gent, patient, loving study of all the multitudinous aspects of 
Nature, the results of which constitute exact knowledge, or 
Science. It is the justification and the glory of this great 
meeting that it is gathered together for no other object than the 
advancement of the moiety of science whic rith those 
phenomena of nature which we call physical. May its endeav- 
ors be crowned with a full measure of success. 
ee Ye ee era 
