On the State in which Alcohol exists in fermented Liquors. 211 
that two old species, the paliurus and the ceanothus, which 
germinate only during the second and third years in the 
sowings annually made at the Museum, rose at the end of a 
few days. Does not this prove that many perennials, like 
the paliurus, ceanothus, &c. do not come up until the se- 
cond or third year, because ibe embryo has uot yet attained 
its necessary degree of maturity? or that the juices con- 
tained in the cotyledons are not sufficiently elaborated,— 
rather than admit, as has heen done generally, that the en- 
velopes of the seeds are too hard, and cannot be pierced 
by the embryo until two or three years expire? This 
Opinion appears to me so much the more erroneous, as, in 
most fruits or seeds the valves or envelope open naturally, 
and without any effort: it can only be admitted in a very 
small number of circumstances ; and | shall add in favour 
of mine, a fact which was related to me by M. Thouin the 
elder, the accuracy of which is well known, namely, that 
gardeners always prefer for melon beds, such seeds as have 
been two or three years gathered, to those of the preceding 
year. 
XXXVII. Additional Remarks on the State in which Alcohol 
exists in fermented Liquors, By Witt1AmM THomas 
BranpE, Esq. F.R.S.* 
Tue experiments and observations contained in this paper 
are intended as supplementary to a communication on the 
same subject, which the Royal Society has done me the 
honour to insert in the Philosophical Transactions for the 
hear 18117. 
On that occasion, I endeavoured to refute the commonly 
received opinion respecting the production of alcohol du- 
ring the distillation of fermented liquors, by showing that 
the results of the process are not affected by a variation of 
temperature equal to twenty degrees of Fabrenheit’s scale ; 
that is, that a similar quantity of alcohol is afforded by 
distilling wine at 180° and at 200°. 
[ also conceived that any new arrangement of the ulti- 
mate elements of the wine, which could have given rise to 
the formation of alcohol, would have been attended with 
other symptoms of decomposition, that carbon would have 
been deposited, or carbonic acid evolved, which in the ex- 
periments alluded to was not the case. Upon such grounds 
{ ventured to conclude, that the relative quantity of alcohol 
* From the Philosophical Transactions for 1813, part i. 
+ Philosophical ‘Transactions, page $37. 
