Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 35.djvu/687

 animals to Europe, and the many kinds which, we have been considering are thus carried from place to place without their own guidance. Thus it is that the tropical faunæ of the two sides of the Atlantic so closely resemble each other. The Gulf Stream, then, serves not only to modify the climate of naturally cold regions, but also to distribute life equally on two different shores, which, without some such communication, would have animals as decidedly different as are those of Asia from American east coast species.



T the call of the Lord Mayor, a meeting was held at the Mansion House, in London, on the 1st of July, to hear statements from men of science with regard to the recent increase of rabies in England and the efficacy of the treatment discovered by M. Pasteur for the prevention of hydrophobia. Among several letters that were read, the following, one from Prof. Huxley and the other from M. Pasteur himself, are of especial interest:

" I greatly regret my inability to be present at the meeting which is to be held under your lordship's auspices in reference to M, Pasteur and his institute. The unremitting labors of that eminent Frenchman during the last half-century have yielded rich harvests of new truths, and are models of exact and refined research. As such they deserve and have received all the honors which those who are the best judges of their purely scientific merits are able to bestow. But it so happens that these subtle and patient searchings out of the ways of the infinitely little—of that swarming life where the creature that measures one thousandth part of an inch is a giant—have also yielded results of supreme practical importance. The path of M. Pasteur's investigations is strewed with gifts of vast monetary value to the silk-trader, the brewer, and the wine merchant. And, this being so, it might well be a proper and a graceful act on the part of the representatives of trade and commerce in its greatest center to make some public recognition of M. Pasteur's services even if there were nothing further to be said about them. But there is much more to be said. M. Pasteur's direct and indirect contributions to our knowledge of the causes of diseased states, and of the means of preventing their occurrence, are not measurable by money values, but by those of healthy life and diminished suffering to men. Medicine, surgery, and hygiene have all been 