approached the rooms where Pasteur had lived and worked was most
impressive to the resident of a country where there was little
reverence for anything in the way of ability of any sort except that
for making money. Pasteur is buried in a mausoleum in the Institute
and numerous tributes from societies and great men the world over
testify to the esteem in which he was held by the thinking portion of
the world.

One particularly interesting feature of the work of the Institute was
the manufacture of a certain poison for rats in the trenches. Rats are
a great nuisance and a possible source of plague to the armies in the
field. In the Autumn the rats come into the trenches where there is an
abundance of waste food, and are particularly numerous where there is
lots of water near which they like to breed.

The method used to kill them is quite ingenious. The rats are fed at
a certain time every day for about ten days, at the end of which they
will come in large numbers almost on the minute. The poisoned food is
then placed for them and a large proportion of the rats are destroyed.
Where poison has once been tried it is useless to make any further
attempts with the same poison for a long time to come, for the rats
will refuse to touch it. The wholesale method outlined has been found
in practise by the French to give the best results.

Our trip to the French front in the Champagne was interesting. Leaving
the station one morning at eight we arrived at Chalons-sur-Marne about
eleven and visited a couple of hospitals there. The hospitals were
well equipped, and some of the surgical devices in use were new and
exceedingly ingenious.

The most vivid impression which remains of those French hospitals,
however, was the lack of fresh air in them; seldom have I breathed a
more vitiated atmosphere. Though it was a warm, pleasant day outside,
every window in the hospital was closed tight.

It is another indication of the strong scientific contradictions
sometimes met with. Though, in theory, the French are most excellent
sanitarians and as a country revere the name of Pasteur, while we have
forgotten, if we ever did know, the name of Lister, in practice they
are about as poor a nation in practical sanitation as it is possible
to be. Imagine a hospital, thoroughly equipped and clean as a new pin,
with such bad air that one of our party fainted and another had to
leave in a hurry to escape the same fate.

After an excellent lunch a