There is no doubt that it is a comparatively easy matter to breed these hybrids, and that they are not only extremely attractive animals to the eye, but hardy and vigorous, possessed of great staying powers, and promising to be capable of severe work. It is recognized that one of the gravest difficulties which the Indian Army Corps has to contend with is the paucity of mules, both for transport and mountain-battery work; and at the time of the South African War a Commission was busily employed purchasing mules both in Italy and in Texas, and elsewhere. Should these hybrids turn out as well as they at present promise, they may fill a want which is acutely felt by those responsible for the conduct of our frequent ‘small wars,’ and, if bred largely in East Africa, may, as Colonel Lugard suggested, prove a source of wealth and revenue in the future.
We have hitherto said little or nothing about the book itself with which we have been dealing. The larger part consists of three articles reprinted from the Veterinarian and one from the Zoologist; but the more recent and more important half is the General Introduction, covering a hundred pages, in which Professor Ewart sums up the results of his experiments. The form of the work necessarily involves a good deal of repetition, but in so complex a subject this is on the whole rather an advantage than otherwise. Professor Ewart’s style is clear, and his pages abound in apposite illustrations. The book cannot fail to attract both the man of science and the practical breeder.
From what we have said it is evident that the Penycuik experiments are of the highest interest both practical and theoretical, and the public spirit and self-devotion shown by the Edinburgh professor in carrying them out cannot be too widely recognized. The expense of feeding and housing some thirty to forty horses, asses, and zebras is very great, and the initial expenditure in erecting stables, buying land and fencing it, is also considerable. It is, perhaps, not too much to hope that some public body may be willing to undertake at least a part of the burden. The Zoological Society of London possesses, not only the necessary establishment required, including a well-trained staff, but it also has facilities for obtaining all kinds of animals which are far greater than those of any private individual. We hope that the day is not far distant when experiments of this kind will be systematically carried on under the direction of the authorities who control the Gardens in Regent’s Park. Probably such experiments would have better prospects of success at a farm in the country than in London, and there is much to be said for such an experimental farm under the management of a body like the Zoological Society. Apart from the more strictly scientific use to which it might be put, it would serve as a convenient sanatorium for those animals which cannot stand the fogs and damp of London.
PASTEUR
Je suis chimiste, je fais des expériences et je tâche de comprendre ce
qu’elles disent.—Pasteur.
As one walks down the Rue des Tanneurs, in the small provincial town of Dôle, where the main line from Paris to Pontarlier sends off a branch north-east towards Besançon, a small tablet set in the façade of a humble dwelling catches the eye. It bears the following inscription in gilt letters: ‘Ici est né Louis Pasteur le 27 décembre 1822.’
Pasteur came of the people. In the heraldic meaning of the term, he was emphatically not ‘born.’ His forbears were shepherds, peasants, tillers of the earth, millers, and latterly, tanners. But he came from amongst the best peasantry in Europe, that peasantry which is still the backbone of the great French nation. The admirable care with which records are preserved in France has enabled Pasteur’s son-in-law and latest biographer to trace the family name in the parish archives back to the beginning of the seventeenth century, at which period numerous Pasteurs were living in the villages round about the Priory of Mouthe, ‘en pleine Franche-Comté.’
The first to emerge clearly from the confused cluster of possible ancestors is a certain Denis Pasteur, who became miller to the Comte d’Udressier, after whom he doubtless named his son Claude, born in 1683. Claude in his turn became a miller, and died in the year 1746. Of his eight children, the youngest, Claude-Étienne, was the great-grandfather of Louis Pasteur. The inhabitants of Franche-Comté were, in large part, serfs—‘gens de mainmorte,’ as they termed them then. Claude-Étienne, being a serf, at the age of thirty wished to enfranchise himself; and this he did in 1763, by the special grace of ‘Messire Philippe-Marie-Francois, Comte d’Udressier, Seigneur d’Ecleux, Cramans, Lemuy, et autres lieux,’ and on the payment of four louis-d’or. He subsequently married and had children. His third son, Jean-Henri, who for a time carried on his father’s trade of tanner at Besançon, seems to have disappeared at the age of twenty-seven, leaving a small boy, Jean-Joseph Pasteur, born in 1791, who was brought up by his grandmother and his father’s sister.
Caught in the close meshes of Napoleon’s conscription, Jean-Joseph served in the Spanish campaign of 1812-1813 as a private in the third regiment of infantry, called ‘le brave parmi les braves.’ In course of time he was promoted to be sergeant-major, and in March, 1814, received the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Two months later the abdication had taken place; and the regiment was at Douai, re-organizing under the name of ‘Régiment Dauphin.’ Here was no place for Jean-Joseph, devoted to the Imperial Eagle and unmoved by the Fleur-de-lys. He received his discharge, and made his way across country to his father’s town, Besançon. At Besançon he took up his father’s trade and became a tanner; and, after one feverish flush during the Hundred Days, and one contest, in which he came off victor, with the Royalist authorities, who would take his sword to arm the town police, he settled down into a quiet, law-abiding citizen, more occupied with domestic anxieties than with the fate of empires.
Hard by the tannery ran a stream, called La Furieuse, though it rarely justified its name. Across the stream dwelt a gardener named Roqui; amongst the gardener’s daughters one Jeanne-Étiennette attracted the attention of, and was attracted by, this old campaigner of twenty-five years. The curious persistence of a family in one place, combined with the careful preservation of parish records, enables M. Vallery-Radot to trace the family Roqui back to the year 1555. We must content ourselves with Jeanne-Étiennette, who in 1815 married Jean-Joseph. Shortly afterwards the young couple moved to Dôle and set up house in the Rue des Tanneurs.