52 
SELECTED ARTICLES. 
about 195° F,, a capsule containing a mixture of 50 grammes 
of water, and one gramme of white of egg; as soon as part 
of the albumen was coagulated by the heat, I took away the 
capsule, and after it had cooled, I examined with the micro- 
scope a portion of the very thin pellicle which had formed on 
the surface of the liquid; I found that the pellicle did in fact 
contain a species of globules, of which the diameter might be 
about the hundredth of a millimetre; but they had in general 
something of a crystallized appearance, and on none of them 
could be distinguished either granules or umbilical spots. It 
appears to me, then, that the objection of which I have spoken 
is not sufficient to authorize the idea that the globules of fer- 
ment are analogous to those of the coagulated white of egg. 
Likewise, I caused, in a closed vessel, the spontaneous fer- 
mentation of the must of porter; that is to say, without the 
addition of yeast. As would be expected according to the 
experiments of M. Thenard, this must, although it had been 
filtered, produced, by the vinous fermentation, a deposit of fer- 
ment; on examining with the microscope this deposit, I found 
it to be composed of globules analogous to those of common 
ferment. But this fermentation having proceeded more slowly 
than with the brewers, on the hypothesis that these globules 
are formed by a sort of albuminous coagulation, some ought 
to be very large, or at least slightly crystalline, like the glo- 
bules of the white of egg, but this was not so; likewise it was 
observed that these globules were not generally as large as in 
common ferments, which is favorable to the supposition of 
an organization; for we may conceive that in a ferment by 
aid of a long time, the globules should be of very different ages. 
I made the same experiment with a flask, previously filled 
with carbonic acid; the fermentation was developed a little 
more slowly, but otherwise the deposit obtained possessed the 
same microscopic appearances. 
We know from Thenard, that juice of ripe fruits, and in 
general the liquors which undergo the vinous fermentation, 
throw down a deposit which has the same properties as fer- 
ment, {Ann. de Chim.) It is also known that a solution of 
