728 TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
I will now examine putrefaction in a case where air has 
had free access. But what I have just stated might lead to the 
belief that it cannot take place, as the oxygen gas destroys 
the vibrions which excite it. Nothing of the kind; and I 
will even show that it is in accordance with the fact that 
putrefaction in contact with air is a phenomenon more com¬ 
plete than that which takes place without it. Let us now 
take a putrescent liquid which has been freely exposed to the 
air, for instance, contained in a large shallow vessel open at 
the top. The effect which I have just described, viz., the 
obstruction of the dissolved oxygen from the mass of the 
liquid, is effected in the same manner as in the first case, the 
only difference consists in the fact that the Bacteriums , &c., 
do not perish after the abstraction of the oxygen, except in 
the interior of the liquid; on the contrary, they continue to 
propagate indefinitely on the surface, because of its being 
in contact with the air. They cause the formation of a thin 
pellicle, which increases in thickness until it breaks up and 
sinks to the bottom of the liquid; another now is brought to 
the surface, and so on. This pellicle, to which are generally 
attached divers species of Mucorii and Muciclinii , prevents the 
dissolving of the oxygen in the liquid, and consequently 
favours the formation of the vibrious ferments; the vessel 
being, as far as they are concerned, as if effectually closed to 
the introduction of air. They even multiply in the pellicle 
itself on the surface, because they are protected from the air 
by the Bacteriums and the Mucorii. 
Against the too direct action of the atmospheric air* the 
putrescent liquid becomes then the seat of two kinds of 
chemical arts very distinct from each other, but which, in 
respect of their physiological functions, have an affinity with 
the two species of beings which they maintain. The vibrious, 
on the one hand, live without the co-operation of the oxygen 
of the air, determine in the interior of the liquid acts of fer¬ 
mentation, that is, they transform the nitrogenized matter into 
products more simple but still complex ; the Bacterium or 
the mucorii, on the other hand cause combustion of the same 
* I reserve always, nevertheless, as I have done before, the question to 
ascertain whether the ferments, notably the vibrious, do not become airobic 
under certain circumstances from anairobic , as they were when in the state 
ferments. I propose, with all sorts of scruples, these new words, airobic 
and anairobic, to indicate the two classes of inferior beings; one incapable 
of existing without free oxygen gas, the other being capable of multiplying 
ad infinitum when protected from the contact of this gas. 
The new class of anairobic might be called the class of zymics (from 
leaven ferment) that is to say, ferments. The airobics would constitute by 
apposition the class azymics. 
