54 STUDIES ON FERMENTATION. 



^ III, — Experiments on the Juice contained in Grapes. 



In the course of the discussion which took place, at the 

 Academy, on the subject of the generation of ferments, properly 

 so called, much was said about the oldest known fermentation, 

 that of wine. We at once resolved to demolish M. Fremy's 

 theory, by a decisive experiment on the juice of grapes. 



We prepared forty flasks, capable of holding from 250 c.c. to 

 300 c.c. (from 9 to 11 fl. oz.) and shaped as represented in 

 Fio-. 8. These we filled with filtered must, which was perfectly 



J 



Fig. 8. 



bright, and which, like all acid liquids, would remain sound, 

 after having been boiled for a few seconds, although the ends 

 of the long curved necks of the flasks containing the must 

 might remain constantly open for months or years. 



We washed, in a few cubic centimetres of water, part of a 

 bunch of grapes, washing the grapes separately, or the grapes 

 and the wood together, or even the wood of the bunch alone. 

 This washing was easily accomplished by means of a perfectly 

 clean badger's-hair brush, the water receiving all the particles 

 of dust adhering to the surface of the graj^es and the wood of 

 the bunch. By means of a microscope we easily proved that 

 this water held in suspension an infinite number of organized 

 corpuscles, some of them bearing a very close resemblance to 

 the spores of fungoid growths, others to alcoholic ferment, 

 others to mycoderma vini, and so on.* 



• This observation had already been made by Anthon and II. 

 Hoffmann. "If we scrape the surface of a gooseberry with a blunt 

 knife," saysH. Hoffmann, "and put under the microscope the scrapings, 

 which ai'e of a whitish colour, we shall recognize amongst many varieties 

 of shapeless dirt, earthj^ particles and other things, the same fungoid 

 spores that we find in the expressed juice, but we shall see them there 



