Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/266

246 higher object of bringing the principles of the subject into relation with philosophical biology. The scientific significance of fermentation lies in the fact that it brings before us the action and effects of the lowest and most elemental forms of living organisms; it deals with the behavior and influence in numerous relations of elementary organisms reduced to a single cell; but these cells are the units of all organic life, a plant or an animal of a higher order being only the union under special laws of different kinds of cells, each of which acts in a certain determinable manner. While the higher organisms baffle analysis from the infinite complexity and diversity of their minute or histological elements, the key to their study is offered in these lower structures, for "the more simple an organism is, the fewer special kinds of cells it contains, the simpler are the chemical reactions which take place in it, and the more easily are they separated from each other and isolated by experiment;" and from this point of view the history of fermentation becomes nothing less than that of the chemical phenomena of life. The thorough study of ferments, therefore, becomes an indispensable scientific prerequisite to the knowledge of the higher organisms.

The investigation of the influence of different ferment-cells in initiating different lines of chemical change brings us into closer quarters with the relations of chemical and so-called vital forces. As the different radiant forces, thermal, luminous, and chemical, produce their profoundly diverse effects simply by variations of wave-length, so the different kind of cells are supposed to initiate different chemical changes by differences in the vibratory rhythm which starts them. In relation to this point our author remarks:

elsewhere publish a brief notice of the life of Count Rumford—so brief as hardly to give a just idea of the interest that attaches to the romantic and remarkable story of his career. But few biographies are richer in varied incident, or fuller of instruction, than this of Rumford; and its literary execution, by Mr. Ellis, is well worthy of the subject. The four volumes of his works comprise not only all the Count's essays, formerly published in English, but also valuable papers written by him in French and German which have been first translated for this edition. The collection has been supervised by the Rumford Committee of the American Academy of Sciences, who have grouped together in the several volumes, as far as was practicable, the papers on allied subjects: thus the