deterioration, and one minute's heating at the proper temperature suffices to insure the preservation of every kind of wine. Thanks to this operation, the weakest wine, the most disposed to turn sour, to become greasy, or to be threatened with bitterness, is insured against injurious change. Nothing is more simple than to realise the condition of heating in bottles. After having firmly tied down the corks, the bottles are placed in a water-bath. An iron basket is here useful. The water ought to rise up to the wire of the cork. Among these bottles is placed a bottle of water, into which the bulb of a thermometer is plunged. The bath being heated, as soon as the thermometer marks fifty or sixty degrees Centigrade, the basket is withdrawn. The subsequent soundness of the wine is thus insured. But if Pasteur had overlooked nothing in his efforts to prevent or arrest the evil changes of wine, he still saw that full confidence was not felt in the efficacy of a process which must, it was thought, damage the taste, or the colour, or the limpidity of the wine. After having invited the judgment of people in society, whose preference, if they felt any, was generally for the heated wines, Pasteur wished to have a more decisive opinion. He addressed himself first to wine merchants and others practised in detecting the smallest peculiarities of wines; and afterwards he organised a grand experiment in tasting. On November 16, 1865, a sub-commission, nominated by the representative commission of the wholesale wine-sellers of Paris, repaired to the École Normale and examined a considerable number of specimens. After a series of tastings, which recognised, if not a superiority over the heated wines, at least a shade of imperceptible flavour, which, however, it was admitted, would escape nine-tenths of the consumers, Pasteur, fearing that there remained still in the mind of the majority of the commission a slight prejudice against the operation of heating, and that imagination, moreover, had some share in determining shades of flavour, proposed that at the next sitting there should be no indication which of the samples of wine had been heated and which had not. The commission, having no other desire than to arrive at the truth, at once accepted this proposition.