REPORT ON THE SLAUGHTER-HOUSES.

An attentive glance at the past has been, in all ages and in all countries, the infallible means of rightly appreciating the present.  When we direct this glance to the sanitary state of Paris, the name of Bailly will again present itself in the first line amongst the promoters of a capital amelioration, which I shall point out in a few words.

Notwithstanding the numerous acts of parliament,—­notwithstanding the positive police regulations, which dated back to Charles IX., to Henry III., to Henry IV., slaughter-houses still existed in the interior of the capital in 1788; for instance, at l’Apport-Paris, La Croix-Rouge, in the streets of the Butcheries, Mont-Martre, Saint-Martin, Traversine, &c. &c.  The oxen were, consequently, driven in droves through frequented parts of the town; enraged by the noise of the carriages, by the excitements of the children, by the attacks or barking of the wandering dogs, they often sought to escape,—­entered houses or alleys, spread alarm everywhere, gored people, and committed great damage.  Fetid gases exhaled from buildings too small and badly ventilated; the offal that had to be carried away gave out an insupportable smell; the blood flowed through the gutters of the neighbourhood, with other remains of the animals, and putrefied there.  The melting of tallow, an inevitable annexation of all slaughter-houses, spread around disgusting emanations, and occasioned a constant danger of fire.

So inconvenient, so repulsive a state of things, awakened the solicitude of individuals and of the public administration; the problem was submitted to our predecessors, and Bailly, as usual, became the reporter of the Academical Committee.  The other members were Messrs. Tillet, Darcet, Daubenton, Coulomb, Lavoisier, and Laplace.

When Napoleon, wishing to liberate Paris from the dangerous and insalubrious results of internal slaughter-houses, decreed the construction of the fine slaughter-houses known by everybody, he found the subject already well examined, exhibited in all its points of view, in Bailly’s excellent work.  “We ask,” said the reporter of the Academical Commission in 1788, “we ask that the shambles be removed to a distance from the interior of Paris;” and these interior shambles have disappeared accordingly.  Does it create surprise that it required more than fifteen years to obtain the grant of this most reasonable demand?  I will further remark that, unfortunately, there was nothing exceptional in this; he who sows a thought in a field rank with prejudices, with private interests, and with routine, must never expect an early harvest.

BIOGRAPHIES OF COOK AND OF GRESSET.

The publication of the five quarto volumes of which the History of Astronomy consists, together with the two powerful reports that I have just described, had worn out Bailly.  To relax and amuse his mind, he resumed the style of composition that had enchanted him in his youth; he wrote some biographies, amongst others, that of Captain Cook, proposed as a prize-subject by the Academy of Marseilles, and the Life of Gresset.