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ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
by two properties new in science, and extremely remarkable: 
the first is its power of breaking the integuments ; the second 
is that of saccharifying fecula. Now unhappily the first pro- 
perty is possessed by pure water, which, when heated to a 
certain degree, and fecula is thrown into it in small quantities, 
the envelopes are burst, and the soluble substance is liberated. 
After standing, the teguments subside. 
" The second property," continues Raspail, " which con- 
sists in saccharifying fecula, is highly interesting, and is in- 
contestible, but unfortunately it is nothing new. It belongs 
in justice and without any modification, under an economical 
relation, to those who have invented and perfected the art of 
fabricating beer ; and under a scientific relation, to Kirchofp, 
who demonstrated by the most varied experiments, the influ- 
ence that, not only glutinous substances, but solution of malt- 
ed barley, that is to say, germinated barley, exercised on the 
saccharification of fecula." 
Payen and Persoz say, that their diastase is not gluten, 
because it is soluble in water, which is not the case with that 
substance. 
Raspail then observes that " gluten is soluble to a certain 
degree in water saturated with an acid, or ammonia; now in 
organized nature so abundant in acid, and ammoniacal products, 
gluten ought often to be presented under this soluble form, 
and it has not escaped anterior observations. Thus, before the 
name of diastase, it had received the name of soluble gluten, 
properly so called by Einhopp and Berzelius, that of zi- 
mome by Taddei, and that of legumine by Braconnot. 
Raspail then remarks that in 1826 and 7 he demonstrated 
that grain, in germinating, produces an energetic acid, which 
is the acetic, and that then the gluten loses its consistence, 
and the feculent perisperm becomes milky, which is affected 
gradually by the acetic solution of gluten, and the teguments 
are emptied of the soluble substance. The results of the ac- 
tion of gluten on fecula, is to transform it into sugar, then into 
alcohol, and lastly into acetic acid. The brewers arrest the 
fermentation at the two first phases. They cause the barley 
