On the Fecula of Green Plants, 33 



WTien fecula, curd, flesh, or organized matters in general 

 have passed a certain period of that change which we are 

 accustomed to call putrefaction, they suddenly stop at a 

 permanent state, where unknown combinations seem to wait 

 for them, as if to salt and embalm them, as if to ensure 

 their duration in this new state, and to secure them from 

 further destruction. 



When, for example,' curd, fecula, gluten, flesh, have 

 passed through the stages of an infecticu often destructive, 

 and those derangements of colcui^ and form \\hich disfigure 

 them, and have at length attained, some to the caseous state, 

 vegetables and dunghills to that of moid, turf, poudrclte, 

 and meat to such a state as not to be annihilated after iiftcen 

 years of an ichorous stagnation, they all stop at that point 

 without being able to pass beyond it, and without ever 

 reaching, at least in our observation, that final solution 

 which ought to terminate their existence, or reduce them to 

 an earthy inert matter, — nonabsimUe cineribus, as Stahl ex- 

 presses it ; in a word, to a state where no trace is observed 

 cf the radicals which organized them. 



A putrefaction of this kind, strictly speaking, no where 

 takes place. But we no sooner perceive derangements in 

 the organization of an animal or vegetable matter, lividity 

 and bad smell, than we immediately imagine it is com- 

 mencing; and wc confound, without perceiving that we do 

 so, these appearances or pheenomena which belong to a kind 

 of fermentation hltle known, with the effects of that de- 

 composition whicii alone ought to be accounted putrefac- 

 tion, — if its end accords with the ideas we entertain of it, 

 and if it be really that operation which nature has established 

 to analvse, or resolve mto their ultimate elements, those 

 beings subjected to it. 



Let us thence conclude that absolute putrefaction is a 

 thing with which we are entirely unacquainted. But let us 

 return to fecula : it is time to review that which is suffi- 

 ciently divided to pass through the filter. 



VII. We shall take, for example, the filtered juice of cab- 

 bage, one of those which furnish fecula in the greatest 

 abundance ; and the better to show the dilference which 

 there is between this second fecula and albumen, we shall 

 eubject the latter to the same tests. The white of an egg 

 beat up in a pound of water, and filtered, will furnish the 

 liquor of comparison we require, 



1st. Immerse into water heated to \4b degrees two ma- 

 trasses, one with filtered juice and the other with albumen. 

 7"hc juice a moment after becomes turbid,, by caseous flakes 

 B 4 wlucli 



