314 
STATE AGEICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 
way to make known in America the discoveries of Mr. Pas¬ 
teur would be to translate and publish his very valuable work, 
entitled “ Etudes Surle Yin,” sold by Victor Masson & Sons, 
Place de I’Ecole de Medicine, Paris. Meanwhile we will give 
a brief synopsis of it. 
After explaining at length the nature of the different disea¬ 
ses of the wine, acidity, bitterness, etc., tracing them all to 
vegetable parasites, and detailing his experiments in search of 
an agent to destroy the parasites, Mr. Pasteur arrives at the 
conclusion that they are effectually destroyed by heating the 
wine up to a point between fifty and sixty-five degrees of cen¬ 
tigrade, which would be between one hundred and twenty-two 
degrees and one hundred and forty-nine degrees of Fahren¬ 
heit. The heating can be done in a bain marie, that is, by 
placing the bottle or cask in a vessel filled with water and 
heating the water, or by hot-air closets or steam pipes intro¬ 
duced into the casks. The heating should |)e gradually and 
carefully accomplished in order to enable any one to test the 
value of this invention, so important in its aims. ’ 
We extract the following, which gives alHhe author has to 
say on the mode^ he has himself followed with the wine al¬ 
ready in bottle, whether new or old, diseased or sound : 
“ The bottle being corked, either with the needle or otherwise, by machine 
or not, and the corks tied on like those of champagne bottles, they are 
placed in a vessel of water; to handle them easily, they are put into an iron 
bottle-basket. The water should rise as high as the ring about the mouth of 
the bottle. I have never yet completely submerged them, but do not think 
there would be any inconvenience in doing so, provided there should be no 
partial cooling during the heating up, which might cause the admission of a 
little water into the bottle. One of the bottles is filled with water, into the 
lower part of which the bowl of a thermometer is plunged. When this 
marks the degree of heat desired—one hundred and forty-nine degrees 0£ 
Fahrenheit for instance—the basket is withdrawn. It will not do to put in 
another immediately ; the warm water might break the bottles. A portion 
of the heated water is taken out and replaced with cold, to reduce the tem¬ 
perature to a safe point, or, better still, the bottles of the second basket may 
be prepared by warming, so as to be put in as soon as the first comes out. 
The expansion of the wine during the heating process tends to force out the 
cork, but the twine or wire holds it in, and the wine finds a vent between 
the neck and the cork. During the cooling of the bottles, the volume of the 
