THEORY OF FERMENTATION 357 



of remarkable precision, experimentally, as well as in its 

 theoretical aspects, since those who devote their attention 

 to the organic sciences consider it indispensable in every 

 observation and experiment to determine accurately, before 

 anything else, whether the object of their study is animal 

 or vegetable in its nature, whether adult or otherwise. To 

 neglect this is as serious an omission for such students 

 as for chemists would be the neglecting to determine whether 

 it is nitrogen or hydrogen, urea or stearine, that has been 

 extracted from a tissue, or which it is whose combina- 

 tions they are studying in this or that chemical operation. 

 Now, scarcely any one of those who study fermentations, 

 properly so-called, and putrefactions, ever pay any attention 

 to the preceding data. . . . Among the observers to whom 

 I allude, even M. Pasteur is to be found, who, even in his 

 most recent communications, omits to state definitely what 

 is the nature of many of the ferments which he has studied, 

 with the exception, however, of those which belong to the 

 cryptogamic group called torulaceae. Various passages in 

 his work seem to show that he considers the cryptogamic 

 organisms called bacteria, as well as those known as vibrios, 

 as belonging to the animal kingdom (see Bulletin de V Acad- 

 emic de Medicine, Paris, 1875, pp. 249, 251, especially 256, 

 266, 267, 289, and 290). These would be very different, at 

 least physiologically, the former being anaerobian, that is 

 to say, requiring no air to enable them to live, and being 

 killed by oxygen, should it be dissolved in the liquid to any 

 considerable extent." 



We are unable to see the matter in the same light as our 

 learned colleague does; to our thinking, we should be la- 

 bouring under a great delusion were we to suppose " that it 

 is quite as serious an omission not to determine the animal 

 or vegetable nature of a ferment as it would be to con- 

 found nitrogen with hydrogen or urea with stearine." The 

 importance of the solutions of disputed questions often de- 

 pends on the point of view from which these are regarded. 

 As far as the result of our labours is concerned, we de- 

 voted our attention to these two questions exclusively: i. Is 

 the ferment, in every fermentation properly so called, an 

 organized being? 2. Can this organized being live without 



