CHAPTER RAV 
WAS PASTEUR RIGHT IN SAYING THAT NEUTRAL, OR 
SLIGHTLY ALKALINE, GUARDED ORGANIC FLUIDS 
PREVIOUSLY EXPOSED TO II0° C. (230° F.) ALWAYS 
REMAIN BARREN ? 
f Nein can be no doubt that many organic fluids 
which have been heated only a few degrees 
above the boiling-point, and which are subsequently 
kept at a temperature no higher than 86° F. (30 C.), 
will remain barren.? 
It is well-known that neutral or faintly alkaline 
fluids will ferment after exposure to this higher 
temperature better than acid fluids. If, as I have 
endeavoured to prove, the former fluids have, owing 
to their constitution, a greater tendency to ferment 
than acid fluids, this is only what might have been 
expected. It stands to reason that if heat beyond 
a certain intensity tends to stifle the fermentable 
qualities of organic liquids, a lower degree of heat 
would extinguish these qualities in the less ferment- 
able fluids than would suffice to annul them in the 
more fermentable fluids. If fermentability is a 
quality of organic fluids inseparable from, or solely 
dependent upon, the presence of certain living 
1 This chapter is a reproduction, with only slight additions and a 
few verbal alterations, of one section of my Memoir in the Journal of 
the Linnean Society (Zool.), vol. xiv., No. 74, 1878. 
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