The resulting uncertainty as to whether the heated or the unheated wines were to be preferred was so absolute as to be comical. It is unnecessary to say that the heated wines had not experienced the least alteration. At a certain point Pasteur, who was astonished at the extraordinary delicacy of the palate of these tasters, employed a little trickery. He offered them two specimens absolutely identical, taken out of the same bottle. There were preferences, very slight it is true, but preferences gravely expressed for one or the other glass. The commission, making allusion in its report to this special tasting experiment, was the first to allow with a good grace that the differences between the heated and non-heated wines were insignificant, imperceptible if they existed, and that the imagination--added the report--was not without considerable influence in the tasting; since the members of the commission had themselves fallen into a little experimental snare. Thus Pasteur, after having revealed the causes which determine the alterations of wines, had found the means of practically neutralising them. By the application of heat, and without producing any change in the colour or flavour of the wines, he had been able to insure their limpidity, and to render them capable of being indefinitely preserved in well-closed vessels. If these wines, being afterwards exposed too long to the air, were again threatened with alteration, it was because the air brought to them new living germs of those ferments which had been destroyed by the heat. But germs from this source are so trifling compared with those contained in the wine itself, that one may almost say the heating process renders the wine unalterable even after it has been rebottled in contact with the air. Thus, by a series of experiments which left nothing to chance, one of the greatest economic questions of the day was solved. Wines could be kept or transported into all countries without losing their flavour or their perfume. These experiments of the laboratory were destined to have an extensive application; for very soon arrangements were made for heating wine in barrels, the inquiry thereby assuming the proportions of a public benefit. _THE SILKWORM-DISEASE._