There should be nothing very surprising in the fact that fermentation can originate in fruits and form alcohol without the presence of yeast, if the fermentation of fruits were not confounded completely with alcoholic fermentation yielding the same products and in the same proportions.  It is through the misuse of words that the fermentation of fruits has been termed alcoholic, in a way which has misled many persons. [Footnote:  See, for example, the communications of mm.  Colin and Poggiale, and the discussion on them.  In the Bulletin de l’Academie de Medecine, March 2d, 9th, and 30th, and February 16th and 23rd, 1875.] In this fermentation, neither alcohol nor carbonic acid gas exists in those proportions in which they are found in fermentation produced by yeast; and, although we may determine in it the presence of succinic acid, glycerine, and a small quantity of volatile acids [Footnote:  We have elsewhere determined the formation of minute quantities of volatile acids in alcoholic fermentation.  M. Bechamp, who studied these, recognized several belonging to the series of fatty acids, acetic acid, butyric acid &c.  “The presence of succinic acid is not accidental, but constant; if we put aside volatile acids that form in quantities which we may call infinitely small, we may say that succinic acid is the only normal acid of alcoholic fermentation.”—­Pasteur, Comptes rendus de l’ Academie, t. xlvii., P. 224, 1858] the relative proportions of these substances will be different from what they are in the case of alcoholic fermentation.

III.  REPLY TO CERTAIN CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS OF THE GERMAN NATURALISTS, OSCAR BREFELD AND MORITZ TRAUBE.

The essential point of the theory of fermentation which we have been concerned in proving in the preceding paragraphs may be briefly put in the statement that ferments properly so called constitute a class of beings possessing the faculty of living out of contact with free oxygen; or, more concisely still, we may say that fermentation is a result of life without air.

If our affirmation were inexact, if ferment cells did require for their growth or for their increase in number or weight, as all other vegetable cells do, the presence of oxygen, whether gaseous or held in solution in liquids, this new theory would lose all value, its very raison d’etre would be gone, at least as far as the most important part of fermentations is concerned.  This is precisely what M. Oscar Brefeld has endeavoured to prove in a Memoir read to the Physico-Medical Society of Wurzburg on July 26th, 1873, in which, although we have ample evidence of the great experimental skill of its author, he has nevertheless, in our opinion, arrived at conclusions entirely opposed to fact.