STUDIES ON FERMENTATION. 



123 



ment either into a formative element of tissue or into a 

 mucedinous plant ? 



" Organizable matter may, according to its successive states of 

 development or age, and according to the different forms it 

 takes in the tissues, be distinguished by special names : — 



"1. — We may term matter organizable as long as the globulines 

 composing it are not yet visible to microscopes of existing power. 



" 2. — We may speak of amorphous or (jlohuline tissue when even 

 the globulines, previously invisible, have increased so as to be 

 seen under the microscope, the term amorphous, or shapeless, 

 being here applied to the association of globulines, and not to 

 the globulines themselves. 



" 3. — Then we have 'vesicular tissue, when the globulines, con- 

 tinuing to increase, have developed in such a manner as to 

 present a mass of continuous vesicles, still empty or already 

 containing a new generation of globulines, 



"4. — ljdi%t\y y^ehdiYB filamentous or tubular tissue, when the 

 globulines, instead of vesiculating, form threads or tubes."* 



* The following is Turpin's application of his theory to the formation 

 of the ferments of fruits {Memoires de V Academie, t. xyii., 1840, p. loo), 

 where also, on p. 171 the above quotation will be found: — Ferments 

 Produced by the Filtered Juice of the Pulp of Different Fruits — " By the 

 word pulp we mean the soft and juicy cellular tissue of the fleshy part, 

 mesocarp or middle layer of the pericarp of certain ripe fruits. This 

 cellular tissue, which is very abundant in the peach and all stone-fi'uit, 

 in the apple and pear, in the orange and grape, and similar fruits, is the 

 same as that which forms the body of a leaf. Being in every case com- 

 posed of a simple agglomeration of contiguous mother- vesicles, which 

 are always filled with globulines that are more or less developed, more or 

 less coloured, and individually endowed with a special vital centre, it is 

 not surprising that its globulines when free and detached from the com- 

 pound organisms to which they belong, and from association with its 

 vegetable life, should, when placed in a suitable medium, themselves 

 vegetate and become transformed, under these new influences, into a 

 mucedine, with filaments and articulations. Such are the very fine, and, 

 consequently, very transparent globulines, which, when left to them- 

 selves in sweetened water, grow and become vesicular, producing other 

 globuUnes in their interior, then bud, vegetate into mucedinous fila- 

 ments, decompose sugar, and produce all the efi'ects that constitute what 

 we term alcoholic fermentation." 



