Three hens were lying on the table, all of them dead. The first one had been inoculated under the thorax with five drops of yeast water slightly alkalized, which had been given as a nutritive medium to some bacteridia anthracis; the hen had been placed in a bath at 25° C., and had died within twenty-two hours. The second one, inoculated with ten drops of a culture liquid, had been placed in a warmer bath, 30° C., and had died in thirty-six hours. The third hen, also inoculated and immersed, had died in forty-six hours. Besides those three dead hens, there was a living one which had been inoculated in the same way as the first hen. This one had remained for forty-three hours with one-third of its body immersed in a barrel of water. When it was seen in the laboratory that its temperature had gone down to 36° C., that it was incapable of eating and seemed very ill, it was taken out of the tub that very Saturday morning, and warmed in a stove at 42° C. It was now getting better, though still weak, and gave signs of an excellent appetite before leaving the Academy council chamber. The third hen, which had been inoculated with ten drops, was dissected then and there. Bouley, after noting a serous infiltration at the inoculation focus, showed to the judges sitting in this room, thus suddenly turned into a testing laboratory, numerous bacteridia scattered throughout every part of the hen. “After those ascertained results,” wrote Bouley, who drew up the report, “M. Colin declared that it was useless to proceed to the necropsy of the two other hens, that which had just been made leaving no doubt of the presence of bacilli anthracis in the blood of a hen inoculated with charbon and then placed under the conditions designated by M. Pasteur as making inoculation efficacious. “The hen No. 2 has been given up to M. Colin to be used for any examination or experiment which he might like to try at Alfort. “Signed: G. Colin, H. Bouley, C. Davaine, L. Pasteur, A. Vulpian.” “This is a precious autograph, headed as it is by M. Colin’s signature!” gaily said Bouley. But Pasteur, pleased as he was with this conclusion, which put an end to all discussion on that particular point, was already turning his thoughts into another channel. The Academician who had joined the members of the Commission was showing him a number of the _Revue Scientifique_ which had appeared that morning, and which contained an article of much interest to Pasteur. In October, 1877, Claude Bernard, staying for the last time at St. Julien, near Villefranche, had begun some experiments on fermentations. He had continued them on his return to Paris, alone, in the study which was above his laboratory at the Collège de France.