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vegetables it is obtained by certain chemical processes. ^ The sac- 
charine fermentation appears to be the agent by which fruits acquire 
an increase of their sweetness, after being plucked from the parent 
stock, when no action of vegetable life can go on. By an accele- 
ration of this process, by the aid of caloric, in the operation of 
baking, this effect is still more manifestly produced. 
If to vegetable substances possessing this principle, an addition of 
water be made, and a slight increase of caloric be made, an intestine 
motion soon takes place, called, from its product, the vinous fermen- 
tation. During this process, the object of which appears to be, the 
diminishing the dose of carbon, which is united with the oxygen and 
hydrogen in the sugar, we find carbonic acid gas is rapidly separated, 
a feculent sediment is deposited, and a new substance, called yeast, 
or must, is formed, which rises to the surface, and which, if added to 
anv vegetable infusion containing the saccharine principle, wiff im- 
mediately excite that peculiar intestine motion on which this species 
of fermentation depends. 
When this separation has taken place, but whilst the fermentative 
motion is still discoverable, if the fluid be carefully preserved from 
the access of air, it passes on, through an almost, and, m the latter 
stages of it, an entirely, imperceptible fermentation, during which 
it obtains its highest degree of strength, becoming a clear and bright 
spirituous intoxicating liquor. 
But if, instead of this seclusion, the process be allowed to go on 
in contact with the atmospheric air, instead of a spirituous liquor, a 
peculiar vegetable acid, or vinegar, is the result ; which will also 
require, for its preservation, a seclusion from the atmospheric air, 
since otherwise it will suffer a furthei^ decomposition, its volatile 
principles escaping, and its earth and carbon only remaining. 
Thus also will almost any mass of dead vegetable matter, expose 
to the air of the atmosphere, soon pass on to a putrid fermentatio , 
