192 Obituary notice of M. Louis Pasteur. [D EC. 
Richard. Burn, Esq., I.C.S., proposed by Dr. G. A. Grierson, seconded 
by C. R. Wilson, Esq. 
G. Place, Esq., I.C.S., Judge, Chapra, proposed by Dr. G. A. Grier¬ 
son, seconded by C. R. Wilson, Esq. 
Dr. Arnold Caddy, proposed by Dr. W. J. "Simpson, seconded by 
Dr. G. Ranking. 
The following gentleman has expressed a wish to withdraw from 
the Society. 
Dr. 0. C. Raye. 
The Natural History Secretary read obituary notices of the deaths 
of Monsieur Louis Pasteur and Prof. T. II. Huxley. 
Louis Pasteur was born in 1822 at Dole, in the Jura. His education 
commenced at the Communal College at Arbois, and lie passed into the 
E'cole Normalein 1843. Here he studied chemistry under Balard, and at 
theSorbonne under Dumas, showing remarkable application. It was in the 
E'cole Normale, under Delafosse, that he commenced that study of mole¬ 
cular physics, which led up to his first important work, tlie investigation 
on the isomeric crystals of the tartrates and paratartrates of soda and 
ammonia. This work was interrupted by his appointment as Dean of 
the Faculty of Sciences at Lille ; here the chief industry of the town was 
the manufacture of alcohol, and Pasteur, desiring to improve it by scienti¬ 
fic methods, took up the study of fermentation. The change of subject 
was not so great as it seems, for in his study of the tartaric salts he had 
observed cases in which fermentation had seemed due to the presence of a 
living organism. Now, combining chemistry and microscopy as they had 
hardly ever been combined before, he succeeded in proving that fermen¬ 
tation generally is due to the action of organisms living in the fermenting 
substance. More, he showed that each method of fermentation, vinous, 
putrefactive, or otherwise, was due to a specific micro-organism appro¬ 
priate to that method. Most important of all, Pasteur’s investigations 
shewed that each species of ferment may be isolated and cultivated 
separately, and in certain instances be so modified by cultivation as to 
exert but relatively slight influence on substances which it would 
naturally strongly affect. The most direct applications of these results 
were, naturally, made in the manufacture of wine and vinegar and later 
on of beer, the so-called diseases of which, being traced to the disturbing 
influences of other micro-organisms mingled with those of the true 
alcoholic ferment, pure yeast, could now be prevented, for instance by the 
heating process known specially as Pasteurization. Hence accrued a great 
gain to the wine and beer industries; but the utility of the proof that 
