Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/250

240 own, which was a triumph for his position. Having shown, by means of bottles of air collected from different heights in a mountain-region, that the number of germs in the air diminishes with the elevation above the earth, and that air can be got free from germs and unproductive, M. Pasteur asserted decisively: "There is no circumstance now known that permits us to affirm that microscopic beings have come into the world without germs, without parents like themselves. Those who affirm it have been victims of illusions, of experiments badly made, and infected with errors which they have not been able to perceive or avoid. Spontaneous generation is a chimera." M. Flourens, Perpetual Secretary of the Academy, said: "The experiments are decisive. To have animalcules, what is necessary, if spontaneous generation is real? Air and putrescible liquids. Now, M. Pasteur brings air and putrescible liquids together, and nothing comes of it. Spontaneous generation, then, is not. To doubt still is not to comprehend the question." There were, however, some who still doubted, and to satisfy them M. Pasteur offered, as a final test, to show that it was possible to secure, at any point, a bottle of air containing no germs, which would, consequently, give no life. The Academy's committee approved the proposition; but M. Pouchet and his friends pleaded for delay, and finally retired from the contest.

The silk-raising industry of the south of France was threatened with ruin by a disease that was destroying the silk-worms, killing them in the egg, or at a later stage of growth. Eggs, free from the disease, were imported from other countries. The first brood flourished, but the next one usually fell victims to the infection, and the malady spread. All usual efforts to prevent it or detect its cause having failed, a commission was appointed to make special investigations, and M. Pasteur was asked to direct them personally. He did not wish to undertake the work, because it would withdraw him from his studies of the ferments. He, moreover, had never had anything to do with silk-worms. "So much the better," said Dumas. "You know nothing about the matter, and have no ideas to interfere with those which your observations will suggest." Theories were abundant, but the most recent and best authorities agreed that the diseased worms were beset by corpuscles, visible only under the microscope. He began his investigations with the idea that these corpuscles were connected with the disease, although assurances were not wanting that they also existed in a normal condition of the silk-worm. M. Pasteur's wife and daughters, and his assistants in the normal school, associated themselves with him in the studies, and became, for the time, amateur silk-raisers. He studied the worms in every condition, and the corpuscles in every relation, for five years. He found that there were two diseases—the contagious, deadly pébrine, the work of the corpuscles, and flachery, produced by an internal organism; and "became so well acquainted with the causes of the trouble and their different manifestations that he could, at will,