should it not secrete another diastase capable of trans-
forming sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid? ¹

Such was, at least as far as we can see, the cycle of
ideas which Bernard made a beginning of submitting
to experimental verification at his country house at
Saint-Julien, at the time of the vintages of 1877, some
months before his death. Without saying anything
about it to any one, he had written down, a little care-
lessly, his first results and his new projects for experi-
ments in the loose leaves of a manuscript which was
found after his death, and which his friends believed
worthy of publication. It is always necessary to dis-
trust one's friends, especially when one is no longer there
to watch them. Posthumous writings have never aug-
mented the glory of any one, and the publication of these
few pages of notes, which Bernard had very wisely con-
cealed at the bottom of a drawer, had not, in my opinion,
any pretext or excuse. The kind of general ideas in the
light of which they had been conceived and written was
sufficiently well-known by the recent publication of the
work Sur la phénomènes de la vie communs aux animaux
et aux végétaux, the proof of which Bernard had carefully
corrected at Saint-Julien in 1877. If the ideas of the
master had undergone a little change since then, it is
not to be observed in the sybilline phrases of the manu-
script. In running through them to-day, it seems evi-
dent that Bernard could not have considered his work
as anything more than a blow given with a mattock
in order to test the soil before beginning his labors.