PRRMRNTA TTON. 



bacteria, and thus postpones the evil day. By boiling her 

 milk she also . -s period of sweetness. weeks 



the Alps I made a few experiments on theinlK 

 .d upon ants. Though the sun was strong, pa 

 of snow still maintained themselves on the mountain 

 slopes. The ants \\ere found in the warm grass in 



fci adjacent. Tran.-fenvd to the snow the 

 rapidity of their paralysis was surprising. In a few seconds 



. after a few languid struggles, would wholly 

 lose its power of locomotion and lie practically dead upon 

 the snow. Transferred to the warm rock, it would r 

 to be again smitten with death-like numbness when retrans- 

 fern-d to the snow. What is true of tho ant is specially 

 true of our bacteria. Their active life is bu.-pend- 

 cold, and with it their power of producing or continuing 

 putrefaction. This is the whole philosophy of the preser- 

 vation of meat by cold. The fishmonger, for example, 

 when he surrounds ins very assailable wares by Inn 

 ice, stays the process of putrefaction by reducing to numb- 

 ness and inaction the organisms which produce it, and 

 in the dbttlMM of which his fish would remain sweet and 

 sound. It is the astonishing activity into which these 

 bacteria are pushed by warmth that renders a single MIIU- 

 mer's day sometimes so disastrous to the great butchers of 

 London and (llasgow. The bodies of guides |..-t in the 

 -ses of Alpine glaciers have come to the suiface forty 

 years after their interment, without the flesh showii 

 sign of putrefaction. Hut the most astonishing case of 

 this kind is that of the hairy elephant of Siberia \\hich 



Mind incased in ice. It had been buried for iw 

 when laid bare its flesh was sweet, and for some time 

 afforded copious nutriment to the wild beasts which fed 

 upon it. 



Beer is assailable by all the organisms here referred to. 

 some of which produce acetic, some lactic, and some 

 butyric acid, while yeast is open to attack from the b:i 

 of putrefaction. In relation to the particular beverage the 

 brewer wishes to produce, these foreign ferments have 



lit <>f disease. The cells of the 

 I'-aven are globules, usually somewhat clou: 



ore or less rod-like or eel-like in 



them beiiiL' beaded so as to resemble 

 laces. Each of these organisms pro* luces a fermentation 



