ogist on a
subject which was eminently theirs. 'On trouva etrange que je fusse
si peu au courant de la question; on m'opposa des travaux qui avaient
paru depuis longtemps en Italie, dont les resultats montraient
l'inutilite de mes efforts, et l'impossibilite d'arriver a un resultat
pratique dans la direction que je m'etais engage. Que mon ignorance
fut grande au sujet des recherches sans nombre qui avaient paru depuis
quinze annees.' Pasteur heard the buzz, but he continued his work. In
choosing the eggs intended for incubation, the cultivators selected
those produced in the successful 'educations' of the year. But they
could not understand the frequent and often disastrous failures of
their selected eggs; for they did not know, and nobody prior to
Pasteur was competent to tell them, that the finest cocoons may
envelope doomed corpusculous moths. It was not, however, easy to make
the cultivators accept new guidance. To strike their imagination, and
if possible determine their practice, Pasteur hit upon the expedient
of prophecy. In 1866 he inspected, at St. Hippolyte-du-Fort, fourteen
different parcels of eggs intended for incubation. Having examined a
sufficient number of the moths which produced these eggs, he wrote out
the prediction of what would occur in 1867, and placed the prophecy as
a sealed letter in the hands of the Mayor of St. Hippolyte.

In 1867 the cultivators communicated to the mayor their results. The
letter of Pasteur was then opened and read, and it was found that in
twelve out of fourteen cases there was absolute conformity between his
prediction and the observed facts. Many of the groups had perished
totally; the others had perished almost totally; and this was the
prediction of Pasteur. In two out of the fourteen cases, instead of
the prophesied destruction, half an average crop was obtained. Now,
the parcels of eggs here referred to were considered healthy by their
owners. They had been hatched and tended in the firm hope that the
labour expended on them would prove remunerative. The application of
the moth-test for a few minutes in 1866, would have saved the labour
and averted the disappointment. Two additional parcels of eggs were
at the same time submitted to Pasteur. He pronounced them healthy;
and his words were verified by the production of an excellent crop.
Other cases of prophecy still more remarkable, because more
circumstantial, are recorded in Pasteur's work.

Pasteu