STUDIES ON FERMENTATIO>f. 179 



various ferments one deserves special mention — namely, the 

 variety termed saccharomi/ces pastorianus. As is the case with 

 all ferments, when we gather it from the deposits produced 

 in must that has been fermented by its action, it is composed 

 entirely of oval or spherical cells or of short joints. When again 

 placed in a similar must it buds, like all the ordinary ferments, and 

 the buds detach themselves from the joints or mother-cells as soon 

 as they have attained the size of these latter, from which time 

 in the new deposit is reproduced the original ferment-form 

 from which it sprung, and so on. Under certain conditions 

 of exhaustion, however, which may be easily obtained, and 

 which we have already accurately described, the cells undergo 

 an absolute change as regards their capabilities of budding 

 and germinating. Each cell, modified in its structure by the 

 conditions we have mentioned, shows a tendency to shoot out 

 all around its surface, with astonishing rapidity, into a mul- 

 titude of buds, from many of which spring branching chains, 

 covered in parts, and more especially at the internodes, with 

 cells and jointed filaments, which fall off and bud in their 

 turn, soon to present the forms of the yeast deposit. In this 

 way saccharomyces pastorianus seems to afford a kind of bond 

 of union between the race of ferments on the one hand, 

 and certain kinds of ordinary fungoid growths on the other. 

 Of these latter the plant which De Bary has named dematium, 

 and which is generally found on the surface of leaves or 

 dead wood, more especially, however, on the wood of the 

 vine at the end of autumn, the time of the vintage, presents 

 a striking example. 



There seems every reason to believe that at this period of 

 the year one or more of the varieties of dematium furnish 

 cells of yeast, or even that the ordinary aerobian varieties of 



Note of November, 1872, M. Bechamp commences by making various 

 assertions concerning the forms assumed by cells of the alcoholic ferment 

 of the grape when in process of fermentation. This question was dis- 

 cussed by us ten years before, and our conclusions supported by sketches, 

 in a Note which appeared in the Bulletin de la Societe chimique de Paris, 

 for 1862. 



N 2 



