d he
pointed out how to secure healthy eggs, and so rear healthy worms. He
thus gave his countrymen the knowledge necessary to the saving of the
French silk industry, and to a very large increase of the value of the
annual productiveness of the country.

Of course, a man who had gone thus far could not stop. If he "could save
the silk-worm, he might save larger animals. France was losing sheep and
oxen at the rate of from fifteen to twenty millions annually. The
services of M. Pasteur were again in demand. Again he discovered that
the devastator was a microscopic destroyer. It was anthrax. The result
of his experimenting was the discovery of an antidote, a method of
prevention by inoculation with attenuated microbes. Similar studies and
experiments and discoveries enabled him to furnish relief to the hog, at
a time when the hog-cholera was making devastations. As he had
discovered a preventive remedy for anthrax, he also found a remedy for
chicken-cholera, to the saving of poultry to an incalculable extent.

Having thus contributed more to the material wealth of his country than
any other living Frenchman, M. Pasteur naturally turned his discovery of
the parasitic origin of disease toward human sufferers. A man of
convictions and of faith, he has had the courage to ask the French
minister of commerce to organize a scientific commission to go to Egypt
to study the cholera there under his guidance.

M. Paul Best, who was M. Pasteur's early rival in scientific discussion,
paid a generous tribute to his great ability and services, and declared
that the discovery of the prevention of anthrax was the grandest and
most fruitful of all French discoveries. M. Pasteur's native town, Dole,
on the day of the national _fete_ last year (1883), placed a
commemorative tablet on the house in which he was born. The government's
grant of a pension of $5,000 a year, to be continued to his widow and
children, was made on the knowledge that if M. Pasteur had retained
proprietary right in his discovery, he might have amassed a vast
fortune; but he had freely given all to the public. According to an
estimate made by Professor Huxley, the labors of M. Pasteur are equal in
money value alone to the _one thousand millions of dollars_ of indemnity
paid by France to Germany in the late war. It is also to be remembered
that M. Pasteur's labors imparted stimulus to discovery in many
directions, setting many discoverers at work, who are now experimen