714 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



out using free oxygen gas, produces at once phenomena of fermenta- 

 tion." 



I have not yet made the experiments, but every thing leads me to 

 believe that animal cells should act like vegetable ones. Death can- 

 not suppress instantly the reaction of the solids and liquids in the 

 organism. I am convinced, but it is as yet only a preconceived idea, 

 that on asphyxiating an animal suddenly there should appear here and 

 there, and perhaps in all parts of his body, acts of fermentation whose 

 slight duration or intensity have prevented their detection hitherto. 

 Perhajis I may soon bring before this Academy the result of an experi- 

 ment which Avould consist in tying firmly the limb of an animal so as 

 to stop the circulation in it, and then plunging it into an atmosjjhere 

 of carbonic-acid gas. What will take place in this limb thus stricken 

 with death ? A sort of physical and chemical life, if I may so speak, 

 will continue and will probably manifest itself by phenomena of gan- 

 gi*ene which I have long considered as having but distant connections 

 with putrefaction, and which, in my opinion, might be classed with 

 the phenomena oiFared by a fruit detached from the tree which bore it. 



I shall now answer M. Bouillaud's question, " What are the 

 FERMENTS OF THE FERMENTS ? " In Other words, " How cau the fer- 

 ments which are living beings, and which contain materials of the 

 same order as those of all living beings, decompose after the decompo- 

 sitions which they have themselves provoked ? How can they be de- 

 stroyed and disappear, or at least be reduced to the germs alone, 

 which are eternal, so much at least as life may be eternal on the 

 surface of the earth ? How can the materials which compose them 

 become gaseous and return to the atmosphere in the more or less min- 

 eral forms of vapor, carbonic-acid gas, hydrogen, nitrogen, ammonia, 

 etc. ? " 



Although in the transformations to which I allude, and which will 

 now occupy us, Nature obeys a very small number of perfectly-deter- 

 mined general laws, the phenomena present an infinite variety in the 

 details, and if I wished to include all the forms of the return to the 

 air or soil of organic matter after death, it would require time and 

 space which are not at my disposal ; but as amid the tliousand varia- 

 tions of the phenomena a very small number of laws preside over 

 their manifestation, as these laws are found in all the individual cases, 

 I cannot answer the question of our illustrious associate better than 

 by taking a definite example, following it through all its phases, and 

 then adding, " ah uno disce omnes.'''' 



I shall take the return to the atmosphere, and to the soil, of one of 

 the most precious fruits of the earth, the grape, and, far from restrict- 

 ing the difficulty, I shall take it in its greatest complexity. It is un- 

 necessary to say that instead of the grape I might have taken any 

 other woody or leafy organ, either of the vine or of any other plant, 



