128 STUDIES ON FERMENTATION. 



On June 13th, 1872, we sowed by the help of a platinum 

 wire in some wort, contained in two-necked flasks, A, B, and C, 

 several of the minute sporange-bearing filaments of mncor along 

 with the heads containing the spores. 



On June 14thj there was no mycelium visible to the naked 

 eye in the liquids. 



from the Bulletin of the society:—" Meeting of March 30th, 1861. At 

 this meeting a paper was read by M. Pasteur ' On the supposed changes in 

 the form and vegetation of yeast-cells, depending on the external con- 

 dition of their development.' It is well-known that Leuwenhoeck was 

 the first to describe the globules of yeast, and that M. Cagnard-Latour 

 discovered their faculty of multiplying by budding. This interesting 

 vegetable organism has been the subject of a host of researches by 

 chemists and botanists. The latter, from the days of Turpin and 

 Kutziug, have almost unanimously regarded yeast as a form of develop- 

 ment of various inferior vegetable tyjDes, especially peniciUium. The 

 studies of this subject which seem to have won most favour during the 

 last few years are those of MM. Wagner, Bail, Berkeley, and H. 

 Hoffmann. The researches of these botanists seem to strengthen and 

 confirm the original observations of Turpin and Kutzing. M. Pouchet 

 has, quite recently, expressed the same ideas, and has determined certain 

 points in connection with them with much precision of detail. M. 

 Pasteur has long studied this important question, which is so intimately 

 connected with the essential nature of yeast and with those phenomena 

 of the polymorphism of the inferior tjqies of vegetable life, to which 

 most of the remarkable works of M. Tulasne relate ; he has, however, 

 arrived at results that are altogether negative, and he declares that he 

 was unable to detect the transformation of yeast into any of the 

 mucedines whatsoever, and, inversely, that he could never succeed in 

 producing the smallest quantity of yeast from ordinary mucedines." 

 These same results we communicated to the Societe Chimique of Paris, at 

 a meeting held April 12th, 1861. Throughout the investigation of which 

 we have just indicated the conclusions, we insisted en the necessity of 

 cultivating the separate organisms in a state of purity in all researches 

 relating to these inferior forms of life, if we desire to attain to sure 

 inferences about them ; and the method of working, which we recom- 

 mended, did not differ essentially from that adopted in the i>resent work. 

 Since then the study of these growths has been conducted with the 

 utmost precautions ; and other apparatus, perhaps as safe as those which 

 we employ and better adapted than ours for the study of j^olymorphism 

 of species, have been invented by botanists of great skill — M. de ISary, 

 in Germany, and M. Van Tieyhem, in France. 



