14 
Slack, on the Vinegar Plant. 
but when the solution was allowed to evaporate, it remained 
tough and strong. 
Another thin young vinegar plant was dried in an oven, 
at a temperature too low to burn it. When this process 
was completed, it was like a layer of gelatin, and chinked 
when thrown upon glass. If exposed to the air, it absorbed 
enough water to make it like moist parchment. 
Portions were kept perfectly dry in a bottle for several 
months, and then, when moistened, they appeared to contain 
all the various kinds of vinegar-plant cells uninjured. 
Several pieces were put in saccharine solutions; but in no 
cases of experiment — prolonged from May to November — did 
a vinegar fermentation ensue, although in one instance 
butyric acid was produced. Subsequent attempts to obtain 
butyric acid in the same way were imsuccessful ; but in one 
case I detected a faint smell of some compound of that 
series. In December, vinegar began to appear in a Preston 
salts bottle, in which a piece of the dried plant had been 
placed in May. Sugar was occasionally added, as that first 
introduced disappeared, together with enough water to com- 
pensate for evaporation. Nothing like a tough vinegar 
plant has yet been formed in this bottle ; but the various 
cells are found in a looser state of aggregation, and the 
bacterium bodies abound."^ 
The dried portions of the vinegar plant were not dead, 
because in several experiments I obtained by their immer- 
sion in a saccharine fluid, a new growth of gelatinous matter 
abounding in mycelium threads and other formations. After 
having completely stopped, what I call, the colonial life of a 
vinegar plant, I have not yet succeeded in its restoration, but 
expect to do so by allowing plenty of time. 
Being desirous of knowing to what extent the bacterium- 
like bodies existed in that form of the vinegar plant which 
encrusts the birch twigs used in the German process of aceti- 
fication, I applied to Messrs. Hill, Evans & Co., the proprie- 
tors of the Great Vinegar Works at Worcester, and they 
kindly sent me a sample of the twigs from a vat in full action. 
The delicate gelatinous matter on these twigs contained 
abundance of the bacterium cells, and after the twigs had 
been exposed to the air for some days, I placed them in a 
saccharine solution and obtained no vinegar, but plenty of 
the coloured mould. 
Many efforts have been recently made in France to trace 
the influence of bacterium-like bodies in the production 
* A.t the present time (March) this formation is growing more dense, 
and !>eems likely to become a true vinegar plant. 
