Distillation of Ardent Spirit. 247 
out any previous acidity, which I attribute to an 
entire completion of the spirituous fermentation, 
whilst the air was excluded and the heat never suffi- 
cient to dissolve the tartar. It has been before 
observed that a heat of from seventy to ninety is 
required to form the acetous acid, but putrefaction 
will take place in a temperature of forty-five. The 
putrefaction of vegetables volatilizes and reduces 
them to an earthy state; but, to mark the pheno- 
mena of vegetable putrefaction, and to distinguish 
it from the putrefaction of animal matter, will 
form the subject of another essay, in which I shall 
endeavour to prove, that the production of nitre 
and the formation of vegetable mould, might with 
equal propriety be called fermentation as the pro- 
duction of ammoniac, both being products of pu- 
trefaction. 
Fermentation must, therefore, be either consi- 
dered as a general term, and supposed, according 
to the opinion of Helmont, to be the sole cause 
of almost every transmutation, or it must be limited 
to express some definite process by which one or 
more specific products are obtained. In the latter _ | 
case, the most common application will certainly be 
deemed the most proper, viz. the production of alco- 
hol, by an intestine motion, in the solution of sac- 
charine matter, without the intervention of any 
other agent whatever. 
Some chemists are of opinion, that insipid or 
