104 TRANSACTIONS OF TItE ILtlNOlS 



How can we save the cheap merchandise of the overloaded market 

 until the glut is over and the price remunerative? or how can we preserve 

 the goods, bought cheaply, so that they may serve us when the scarcity 

 and high prices arrive? 



If there he any way, any process, it will ]jrobably be reached through 

 a correct knowledge of the laws of chemical combinations which govern 

 the changes of the decaying fruit, together >vith a better understanding 

 of the character and action of the organic destructive agents which 

 hasten disorganization. 



What is this decay, then, in a chemical point of view? Wherein 

 does it differ from growth? Normally it is but a -step farther in the pro- 

 cess of ripening — e.\rt'ssk>e ripening — maturity beyond the point of use- 

 fulness. And it is just as much a logical sequence of ripening, as ripening 

 is of growth. But if diseased action supervene, as it is almost invariably 

 sure to do, then another element enters into the problem; an element 

 too, of exceeding complexity, which will likely ever continue to baflie a 

 full investigation, from the fact that a life-principle is involved in the ac- 

 tion. Normal decay, as I have called it, or decay not hastened or helped 

 by the action of the lower forms of the fungi, is probably very rare, per- 

 haps in the case of fruits never occurs ; and in that case we niust con- 

 sider decay as disease ; an action wholly or in part caused by a morbific 

 agent. Truly "in death there is life" when every death is the occasion 

 and support of myriads of lives, while the myriads of lives accomplish 

 the death that they may live. 



The arbitrary lines which we please ourselves to draw between the 

 sciences and the branches of science do not exist in nature, and they 

 are only useful as a means to keep the complexity of a subject out of 

 sight so that our imperfect minds may better grasp its parts. So if we 

 investigate the chemical combinations and reactions in decay, apart from 

 the physiological action of the fungoid growth taking place in the decay- 

 ing substance, we are gaining but a partial insight into our subject; but 

 still we must so divide it to comprehend it. 



Vegetative action is described sometimes as a process of deoxyda- 

 tion, because the plants which most engage our attention are, during 

 active growth, reducing carbonic acid, and restoring itsoxygen to the air. 

 This action is directly due to that force, so wonderful, and so hardly 

 comprehended, which we know of only by its action, and which we have 

 called life, or the vital force. Were all other things equal and the vital 

 force lacking, the carbonic acid might still exist free, or enter into com- 

 binations, but it could not be reduced to its elements. Not only so, but 

 let the vital force once be lacking in intensity, or at least not in action, 

 and the so recently divorced elements rush together and are again car- 

 bonic acid, and this action is decay. See how the plant, taking in car- 

 bonic acid and at the same time giving off oxygen during the day, 

 begins to undo its work, taking up oxygen and yielding carbonic 'acid, 

 at nightfall. So, too, when conditions unfavorable to growth occur to a 

 J>ar/ or to the whole of the plant, oxydation, decay at once commences. 



