It follows, therefore, that the Toruloe, or organisms of yeast, are veritable plants; and conclusive experiments have proved that the power which causes the rearrangement of the molecules of the sugar is intimately connected with the life and growth of the plant.  In fact, whatever arrests the vital activity of the plant also prevents it from exciting fermentation.

Such being the facts with regard to the nature of yeast, and the changes which it effects in sugar, how are they to be accounted for?  Before modern chemistry had come into existence, Stahl, stumbling, with the stride of genius, upon the conception which lies at the bottom of all modern views of the process, put forward the notion that the ferment, being in a state of internal motion, communicated that motion to the sugar, and thus caused its resolution into new substances.  And Lavoisier, as we have seen, adopts substantially the same view.  But Fabroni, full of the then novel conception of acids and bases and double decompositions, propounded the hypothesis that sugar is an oxide with two bases, and the ferment a carbonate with two bases; that the carbon of the ferment unites with the oxygen of the sugar, and gives rise to carbonic acid; while the sugar, uniting with the nitrogen of the ferment, produces a new substance analogous to opium.  This is decomposed by distillation, and gives rise to alcohol.  Next, in 1803, Thenard propounded a hypothesis which partakes somewhat of the nature of both Stahl’s and Fabroni’s views.  “I do not believe with Lavoisier,” he says, “that all the carbonic acid formed proceeds from the sugar.  How, in that case, could we conceive the action of the ferment on it?  I think that the first portions of the acid are due to a combination of the carbon of the ferment with the oxygen of the sugar, and that it is by carrying off a portion of oxygen from the last that the ferment causes the fermentation to commence—­the equilibrium between the principles of the sugar being disturbed, they combine afresh to form carbonic acid and alcohol.”

The three views here before us may be familiarly exemplified by supposing the sugar to be a card-house.  According to Stahl, the ferment is somebody who knocks the table, and shakes the card-house down; according to Fabroni, the ferment takes out some cards, but puts others in their places; according to Thenard, the ferment simply takes a card out of the bottom story, the result of which is that all the others fall.

As chemistry advanced, facts came to light which put a new face upon Stahl’s hypothesis, and gave it a safer foundation than it previously possessed.  The general nature of these phenomena may be thus stated:—­A body, A, without giving to, or taking from, another body B, any material particles, causes B to decompose into other substances, C, D, E, the sum of the weights of which is equal to the weight of B, which decomposes.  Thus, bitter almonds contain two substances, amygdalin and synaptase, which can be extracted, in a separate state, from the bitter almonds.  The amygdalin thus obtained, if dissolved in water, undergoes no change; but if a little synaptase be added to the solution, the amygdalin splits up into bitter almond oil, prussic acid, and a kind of sugar.