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SaccbaromKctea : a SJ^etcb of tbe fIDobcrn 

 HDetbobe of Claeeification. 



By H. C. a. Vine. 



zf0i%, 



HE fascinating study of the microscopic organisms, 

 which afford the nearest approach to the physio- 

 logical unit of life, has, during the last half century, 

 engaged the attention of many master minds both 

 in England and on the Continent. Whether we 

 look at this study in its aspect in relation to disease, 

 to economic value as regards our food supplies, or 

 to the great industries which depend upon fermen- 

 tation processes as their raisoii d'etre^ we are at once 

 struck by the vast importance of the issues with which it deals, and 

 we become aware how great a debt humanity and science alike 

 owe to the men who have industriously, and through riiany years 

 of experiment and failure, ascertained the laws by which these 

 organisms are generated, and the means whereby they may be 

 recognised and controlled. 



It is probably in reference to the organisms which form the 

 essential part of commercial yeast that these investigations have 

 been most perfectly carried out, and owing partly no doubt to the 

 fact that, in this case, not only the organism but its environment 

 can be controlled as completely in actual manufacturing practice 

 as in the laboratory, and partly to the great commercial interests 

 involved, which have enabled the research to proceed under con- 

 ditions which attract to it many rising workers, and provides them 

 freely with every assistance which modern science can afford, with 

 the result that, at the present day, the identification of species 

 among these minute organisms is as certain, if not more so, 

 than it is in higher botany. Some short account of the methods 

 by which these wonderful results have been obtained, and by which 

 the minute cells, averaging not more than 2500th of an inch in dia- 

 meter, and precisely similar one to another to all appearance under 

 the highest power of the microscope, can, in a properly provided 

 laboratory, in a few hours be classed much in the same way as a 

 skilled entomologist would classify the specimens in a box of lepi- 



