meter, covered in 24 hours. The ferment best known up
to that time, the yeast, gave figures much smaller and less
striking.

This is not all, for we are about to see appear a new
conception, which the future will make productive--
the conception of the fermenting power. These 300
thousand millions of cells weigh about 1 gram and can
acidify in 4 or 5 days, when the conditions are favorable,
10 kilograms of alcohol. That is to say, each one of
these cells demands per day two thousand times its own
weight in food material. And here there is raised one
of the corners of the veil which for so long a time has
masked from us the grandeur of the rôle of the infinitely
small organisms. Their power of work is out of all pro-
portion to their weight. With a feeble volume, they can
produce great effects: we understand that they may
occupy a great place in the economy of the globe and yet
pass unperceived.

The oxidation of these 10 kilograms of alcohol requires
the putting into play of more than 6 kilograms of oxygen;
that is to say, more than there is in 15 cubic meters of
air. We explain thus the utility of the current of air
ascending in the column of shavings in the German
method, and of the large open window in the upper end
of the Orléans casks.

This oxygen, which it derives from the air through its
aërial surface, the mycoderma transmits to the alcohol
through its submerged surface. But oxidation does not
always take place in the same way. Sometimes it is
arrested in the aldehyde state and the organism yields
products with a disagreeable and suffocating odor. As
in case of the oxidation due to platinum black, the
process is arrested half way. At such times the organ-
ism lives with difficulty; it suffers. Why should we not
say that it is sick? Disease and death are the natural

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