AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



OUR misfortunes inspired me with the idea of these re- 

 searches. I undertook them immediately after the war of 1870, 

 and have since continued them without interruption, with the 

 determination of perfecting them, and thereby benefiting a 

 branch of industry wherein we are undoubtedly surpassed by 

 Germany. 



I am convinced that I have found a precise, practical solu- 

 tion of the arduous problem which I proposed to myself that 

 of a process of manufacture, independent of season and locality, 

 which should obviate the necessity of having recourse to the 

 costly methods of cooling employed in existing processes, and 

 at the same time secure the preservation of its products for any 

 length of time. 



These new studies are based on the same principles which 

 guided me in my researches on wine, vinegar, and the silk- 

 worm disease principles, the applications of which are practi- 

 cally unlimited. The etiology of contagious diseases may, per- 

 haps, receive from them an unexpected light. 



I need not hazard any prediction concerning the advantages 

 likely to accrue to the brewing industry from the adoption of 

 such a process of brewing as my study of the subject has en- 

 abled me to devise, and from an application of the novel facts 

 upon which this process is founded. Time is the best appraiser 

 of scientific work, and I am not unaware that an industrial 

 discovery rarely produces all its fruit in the hands of its first 

 inventor. 



I began my researches at Clermont-Ferrand, in the laboratory, 

 and with the help, of my friend M. Duclaux, professor of chem- 

 istry at the Faculty of Sciences of that town. I continued them 

 in Paris, and afterwards at the great brewery of Tourtel 

 Brothers, of Tantonville, which is admitted to be the first in 

 France. I heartily thank these gentlemen for their extreme 



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