YEAST. 575 



boiling up or " effervescence " of the fermenting liquid, and of Latin 



origin. 



Our Teutonic cousins call the same process " gahren," " gasen," 

 " goschen," and " gischen ; " but, oddly enough, we do not seem to 

 have retained their verb or substantive denoting the action itself, 

 though we do use names identical with, or plainly derived from, 

 theirs for the scum and lees. These are called, in Low German, 

 " gascht " and " gischt ; " in Anglo-Saxon, " gest," " gist," and 

 " yst," whence our " yeast." Again, in Low German and in Anglo- 

 Saxon, there is another name for yeast, having the form "barm," or 

 " beorm ; " and in the midland counties " barm " is the name by 

 which yeast is still best known. In High German, there is a third 

 name for yeast, " hefe," which is not represented in English, so far as 

 I know. 



All tbese words are said by philologers to be derived from roots 

 expressive of the intestine motion of a fermenting substance. Thus 

 " hefe " is derived from " heben," to raise ; " barm " from " beren " or 

 " baren," to bear up ; " yeast," " yst," and " gist," have all to do with 

 seething and foam, with " yeasty waves," and " gusty " breezes. 



The same reference to the swelling up of the fermenting substance 

 is seen in the Gallo-Latin terms " levure " and " leaven." 



It is highly creditable to the ingenuity of our ancestors, that the 

 peculiar property of fermented liquids, in virtue of which they " make 

 glad the heart of man," seems to have been known in the remotest 

 periods of which we have any record. All savages take to alcoholic 

 fluids as if they were to the manner born. Our Vedic forefathers in- 

 toxicated themselves with the juice of the " soma ; " Noah, by a not 

 unnatural reaction against a superfluity of water, appears to have taken 

 the earliest practicable opportunity of qualifying that which he was 

 obliged to drink ; and the ghosts of the ancient Egyptians were solaced 

 by pictures of banquets in which the wine-cup passes around, graven 

 on the walls of their tombs. A knowledge of the process of fermenta- 

 tion, therefore, was in all probability possessed by the prehistoric pop- 

 ulations of the globe ; and it must have become a matter of great in- 

 terest even to primaeval wine-bibbers to study the methods by which 

 fermented liquids could be surely manufactured. No doubt, therefore, 

 it was soon discovered that the most certain, as well as the most ex- 

 peditious, way of making a sweet juice ferment was to add to it a little 

 of the scum, or lees, of another fermenting juice. And it can hardly be 

 questioned that this singular excitation of fermentation in one fluid, by 

 a sort of infection, or inoculation, of a little ferment taken from some 

 other fluid, together with the strange swelling, foaming, and hissing 

 of the fermented substance, must have always attracted attention from 

 the more thoughtful. Nevertheless, the commencement of the scien- 

 tific analysis of the phenomena dates from a period not earlier than the 

 first half of the seventeenth century. 



