January 14,1871.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
573 
MANCHESTER CHEMISTS AND DRUGGISTS’ 
ASSOCIATION. 
The Third ordinary Monthly Meeting' of the Session 
was held in the Memorial Hall, Albert Square, on 
Friday evening, January 6th. Tea was served at seven 
o’cloek, after which the chair was taken by Mr. W. S. 
Brown, the President. 
The following donations were acknowledged:—The 
Pharmaceutical Journal , weekly, from the Society; the 
Pharmacist , from the Chicago College of Pharmacy, 
U.S.; Dr. Thorpe’s ‘ Chemical Problems,’ from the 
Author. 
Mr. Louis Siebold, Lecturer on Pharmacy in Owens 
College, then delivered an interesting address on the 
subject of “Pharmaceutical Examinations.” A resolu¬ 
tion "was afterwards passed, requesting Mr. Siebold to 
prepare his lecture for publication in a substantial form. 
A paper by Mr. Hampson “ On the Importance of 
some Knowledge of Anatomy and Physiology to the 
Pharmacist,” was announced for the February Meet¬ 
ing. 
SOCIETY OF ARTS. 
On Fermentation. 
BY PROFESSOR A. W. WILLIAMSON, F.R.S. 
Lecture IV. — continued. 
In the process of making wine, there are a consider¬ 
able number of operations which arc occasionally con¬ 
sidered rather extraneous to normal wine-making, and 
are by many persons classed amongst frauds. Materials 
are sometimes used in aid of the natural constituents of 
the grape-juice, materials which contribute to the quality 
of the product; some of them by adding materials to it, 
but others simply removing from the substances bodies 
which are not wanted in it. And I must say that it 
does appear to me a great error to object to the intro¬ 
duction of any new conditions which may be found to 
effect an improvement in the product. I do not think it 
is reasonable to suppose, because wine is only known by 
the vulgar as fermented grape-juice, that for that reason 
nothing but grape-juice ought ever to be used in the 
manufacture. I think it would be desirable—in fact, it 
ought to be almost compulsory—that persons should state 
what materials are present in substances which they sell 
to the public; but, I think, with that safeguard, it would 
be right to leave manufacturers perfectly free to employ 
whatever materials they might find most conducive to 
the elaboration of their products. In some countries, 
grape-juice is exceedingly rich in acid and poor in sugar 
(and I think a good deal of wine is rather of that class), 
and wine-makers in such districts find that their stuff 
is more drinkable if some of the acid present in it can 
be removed before it is sent out. They therefore put 
into the must, in fermenting the wine, some chalk, and 
the lime which is present in the chalk combines with 
the tartaric acid and takes it out of the liquid. Thus, 
the sour liquid is rendered less sour, and certainly 
that is not, in any degree, or to any extent whatever, a 
fraudulent admixture. Nothing is added, but only an 
unpleasant substance is taken from it. It also happens 
iu precisely the same districts, that from the paucity of 
sugar which is present in the grape-juice, the wine is too 
weak in alcohol; and that to meet the requirements of 
consumers, many wine-makers now add sugar in the 
process. Now sugar is one of the natural and proper 
constituents ol grape-juice, and if the grapes contain too 
little of it, it does seem quite proper and desirable that 
more should be added. However, in the subsequent 
making of wine, there are several other processes which 
are less natural than these, and about which some greater 
difference of opinion may possibly prevail; and one of 
the commonest, not only amongst wine-makers, but also 
amongst wine-consumers, is the process of fining. In 
order to establish the effect and the meaning of this pro¬ 
cess, I think we must trace back the history of wine from 
the time in which it is first put into casks by those who 
produce it to the time at which it gets into the hands of 
consumers. It is customary—I cannot say whether it is 
universal or not, but I believe it to be so almost—to put 
new wine into now casks; and in the better districts oak 
casks are used. New wood is far more porous than old 
wood when used for such a purpose; and of course the 
wine, when put into the cask, sinks into the wood, so 
that the outer surface is moistened, and allows some of 
the water and alcohol, and the various volatile materials- 
to evaporate. In fact, the wine diminishes during the- 
first year of keeping in wood very rapidly, by a process 
of evaporation. But this is not all. Whilst the water 
and alcohols are evaporating from the outer surface, air 
is dissolved by the liquid which is in the wood. Air 
actually diffuses itself through the wet wood into the 
body of the wine in the cask; and what is more than this,, 
the water and alcohol which go out are replaced by some¬ 
thing. The cask does not collapse, nor is there a vacuum 
produced above the liquid. The wood is always suffi¬ 
ciently leaky for air to come into it, and there is always 
a space left above the wine. Wine-makers arc, there¬ 
fore, in the habit of filling up their wine-casks periodi¬ 
cally. In some districts in France, they are filled 
up in the first year three times, at three different 
periods; and, in the second year, they are filled up only 
twice, but only at perfectly definite periods or seasons, 
which have been found, for those particular wines, to be 
most advantageous. But each time the wine, if exa¬ 
mined carefully, is found to have undergone, not only 
what we chemists should call a process of concentration, 
the solid substances dissolved in the liquid of course 
always remaining behind, the proportion of liquid being- 
diminished, but, at the same time, it has undergone 
other changes, that is, there is a deposit formed from it. 
Some of the bodies present in it, either by themselves 
or by forming compounds with others added to them, 
form a sediment, and in the wine-growing districts it 
is customary, and I have no doubt necessary, to de¬ 
cant the wine and pour it off carefully from the de¬ 
posit many times, for the presence of the deposit, if 
continued in the wine, would be injurious to the future 
changes which it has to undergo. When this comes 
into the hands of the consumer, there is suspended in 
the substance of the wine some of this deposit,—some 
solid particles which might be got to settle down, but 
which could not easily be removed completely by any 
process of mere subsidence, and the processes of fining, 
which are exceedingly various, have for their object the 
more complete removal of these solid particles by form¬ 
ing compounds with them. In some cases, the process 
consists in forming what I might call a sort of mordant, 
or something like a process of dyeing, in which a gela¬ 
tinous compound is formed in the body of the liquid, 
which carries down with it a good deal of colouring- 
matter, which it encloses, and which does, while going- 
down, take with it a number of little filaments and cells 
which were floating in the liquid, and which were so ex¬ 
ceedingly light that they would not have settled and 
could not have been removed otherwise. This point is 
particularly important in relation to a process which I 
shall presently mention. In some cases, it has been 
thought the wine contained too much albuminous matter. 
The theory of fermentation which was held for a long¬ 
time, and which we considered at one of our previous 
meetings, consisted in attributing the process to the de¬ 
composition of the albuminous matter which is present 
in the fermenting liquid. It was supposed that there. 
