STUDIES ON FERMENTATION. 271 



carbonic acid, continue to emit that gas in notable quantity, 

 even when no bruise is to be seen — " as though by a kind of 

 fermentation," as Berard actually observes — and lose their 

 saccharine particles, a circumstance which causes the fruits to 

 appear more acid, although the actual weight of their acid 

 may undergo no augmentation whatever. 



In this beautiful work, and in all subsequent ones of which 

 the ripening of fruits has been the subject, two facts of great 

 theoretical value have escaped the notice of the authors ; these 

 are the two facts which Messrs. Lechartier and Bellamy pointed 

 out, for the first time, namely, the production of alcohol and 

 the absence of cells of ferments. It is worthy of remark that 

 these two facts, as we have shown above, were actually fore- 

 shadowed in the theory of fermentation that we advocated as 

 far back as 1861, and we are happy to add that Messrs. 

 Lechartier and Bellamy, who, at first, had prudently drawn 

 no theoretical conclusions from their work, now entirely agree 

 with the theory we have advanced.* Their mode of reasoning 

 is very different from that of the savants with whom we dis- 

 cussed the subject before the Academy, on the occasion when 

 the communication which we addressed to the Academy, in 

 October, 1872, attracted attention once more to the remarkable 



* Those gentlemen express themselves thus : " In a note presented to 

 the Academy in November, 1872, we pubhshed certain experiments 

 which showed tbat carbonic acid and alcohol may be produced in fruits 

 kept in a closed vessel, out of contact with atmospheric oxygen, without 

 our being able to discover alcohoHc ferment in the interior of those 

 fruits. 



' ' M. Pasteur, as a logical deduction from the principles which he has 

 established m connection with the theory of fermentation, considers that 

 the formation of alcohol may he attributed to the fact that the physical 

 and chemical processes of life in the cells of fruit continue under new 

 conditions, in a manner similar to those of the cells of ferment. Experi- 

 ments, continued during 1872, 1873, and 1874, on different fruits, have 

 furnished results all of which seem to us to harmonize with this proposi- 

 tion, and to establish it on a firm basis of proof." Comptes rendits, 

 t. Ixxix., p. 949, 1874. 



