Effects of Vinous Fermentation. 369 



than twenty-five years, has at his leisure resumed its conside- 

 ration, and by bringing new instruments to bear upon its in- 

 vestigation, more especially the microscope, has obtained very 

 remarkable results. 



That he may preserve ail possible order in his observations, 

 and to simplify as much as possible the object of his interesting 

 researches, the author has confined himself to the most import- 

 ant as it is the most useful of all fermentations, viz. that whose 

 object is to convert saccharine matter into alcohol and carbonic 

 acid gas, and which in chemistry is designated as the Vinous 

 Jermentation. 



M. Cagniard Latour, thoroughly convinced that hencefor- 

 ward all chemical analyses must be preceded and illustrated by 

 microscopic analyses, that so the nature of the bodies under in- 

 vestigation may be recognised, whether inorganic, or organic,* 

 or finally organized organic, t has, as remarked, used the mi- 

 croscope, without whose use we can no longer speak of any body 

 with confidence. 



The microscopic analysis of that paste which is named beer- 

 ferment^ which in chemistry is regarded as a simple substance, 

 and which separates from wort of beer during the fermentation 

 as yeasty under the form of scum and sediment, has convinced 

 M. Cagniard Latour that this paste, though apparently simple, 

 is, on the contrary, when observed through the microscope, a 

 mass entirely composed of a multitude of globular and slightly 

 oval particles, which are vesicular, transparent, and full of 

 smaller globules, the largest reaching to the size of about the 

 hundredth part of a millimetre, or the three-millionth part of 

 an English inch, without motion, and consequently, vegetable 

 in their nature, according to our most approved definitions. 



After having recognised that the vesicular globules of the 

 yeast of beer were organized, the experimentalist was anxious 

 to ascertain by the microscope how these little vegetables exist, 

 and are formed in beer, and how, finally, they are multiplied 



* Organic matter, considered as an element of organization, and only im- 

 pregnated with those elements of life which organized bodies possess. 



t The organic matter employed temporarily in the structure of a vege- 

 table or animal, or the organization destroyed, and reduced into a gelatinous 

 substance. 



