Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/248

238 of destruction are at last accomplished through the work of latent fermentation and slow combustion. Whatever animal or vegetable matter is in the open air or under the ground, which is always more or less impregnated with air, finally disappears. The processes can be stopped only under an extremely low temperature,. . . in which the microscopic organisms can not flourish. These facts come in to fortify the still new ideas of the part which the infinitely little play as masters of the world. If their work, always latent, were suppressed, the surface of the globe, overloaded with organic matters, would become uninhabitable."

Pasteur extended his observations to the acetic fermentation, or conversion of alcohol into vinegar, in which he found an organism, the Mycoderma aceti, actively promoting a process of oxidation. Liebig had attributed this fermentation, also, to the presence of an albuminoid body in process of alteration, and capable of fixing oxygen. He knew of the plant called "mother," but regarded it as an outgrowth of the fermentation, and in no sense the cause. Pasteur proved, by experiments that left no room for doubt—the prominent characteristic feature in all his investigations—that the plant is the real agent in producing the fermentation. He eliminated from his compositions the albuminoid matter, which Liebig had declared to be the active agent, and replaced it with crystallizable salts, alkaline phosphates, and earths; then, having added alcoholized water, slightly acidulated with acetic acid, he saw the mycoderm develop, and the alcohol change into vinegar. Having tried his experiments in the vinegar-factories at Orleans, he became so sure of his position that he offered to the Academy, in one of its discussions, to cover with the mycoderm, within twenty-four hours, from a few hardly-visible sowings, a surface of vinous liquid as extensive as the hall in which they were meeting.

Liebig allowed ten years to pass after Pasteur's investigations, and then published a long memoir traversing his conclusions. Pasteur visited Liebig at Munich, in 1870, to discuss the matter with him. The German chemist received him courteously, but excused himself from the discussion, on the ground of a recent illness. The Franco-German War came on; but, as soon as it was over, Pasteur invited Liebig to choose a committee of the Academy, and furnish a sugared mineral liquid. He would produce in it, before them all, an alcoholic fermentation in such a way as to establish his own theory and contradict Liebig's. Liebig had referred to the process of preparing vinegar by passing diluted alcohol through wooden chips, as one in which no trace of a mycoderm could be found, but in which the chips appeared perfectly clean after each operation. It was, in fact, impossible that there should be any mycoderm, because there was nothing on which it could be fed. Pasteur replied to this: "You do not take account of the character of the water with which the alcohol is diluted. Like all common waters, even the purest, it contains ammoniacal salts and