STUDIES ON FERMENTATION. 115 



— continue to live by utilizing oxygenated matters which, 

 like sugar or such unstable substances, produce heat by their 

 decomposition. The character of ferment thus presents itself 

 to us, not as being peculiar to any particular being or to any 

 particular organ, but as a general property of the living cell. 

 This character is always ready to manifest itself, and, in reality, 

 does manifest itself as soon as life ceases to perform its functions 

 under the influence of free 0x3^ gen, or without a quantity of that 

 gas sufficient for all the acts of nutrition. Thus we should 

 see it appear and disappear concomitantly with that mode of 

 life ; feeble and fugacious in its action when the conditions of 

 this vitality are of a similarly restricted character ; intense, on 

 the other hand, and of long duration and productive of large 

 quantities of carbonic acid gas and alcohol, when the con- 

 ditions are such that the plant or cell can multiply with facility 

 in this novel manner. To this we may attribute all possible 

 degrees of activity in fermentation, as well as the existence of 

 ferments of every variety of form and of very different species. 

 It may readily be imagined that sugar may undergo decompo- 

 sition in a quite different manner from that of which we have 

 spoken, that instead of alcohol, carbonic acid gas, glycerine, and 

 similar substances, it may yield lactic, butyric, acetic, and other 

 acids. It would be only one definite class of cellular organisms, 

 the members of which resembled each other more or less, that 

 decomposed sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid ; others, speci- 

 fically different, would act in a different manner. In short, we 

 may say that the number of these living organisms is a measure 

 of the number of different ferments. 



Plate IV. represents in its two halves the condition of the 

 mycoderma inni at two different and unequal periods after its 

 submersion. In the left-hand semi-circle, it is evident that 

 many of the figures are swollen, that modification of their 

 protoplasm has taken place, and incipient budding is going on 

 in several of them. A budding of this kind would not wither ; 

 the buds would grow and, detaching themselves, would form 

 new cells capable of budding in their turn. We should have 



I 2 



