Studies on Fermentation: The diseases of beer, their causes, and the means of preventing themPasteur, Louis
Science
Studies on Fermentation: The diseases of beer, their causes, and the means of preventing them
Pasteur, Louis
Beer; Fermentation
The structure of the plant differs considerably when it lives surrounded
by air, and when it is more or less completely deprived of that fluid.
If it has an abundance of air at its disposal, if it vegetates on the
surface of a moist substance or in a liquid in which the air held in
solution may be renewed without being incessantly displaced by carbonic
acid gas, we shall see it develop as an ordinary fungoid growth, with a
mycelium consisting of filaments more or less slender, branching, and
entangled, sending up from the surface of the liquid aerial organs of
fructification. This is the well-known form of vegetation of the common
_mucor_. On the other hand, if we compel the _mucor_ to live in a
saccharine liquid with insufficiency of air, at least for some of its
parts, the mode of vegetation will change completely, as we have seen in
the case of _penicillium_, _aspergillus_, and _mycoderma vini_ when
submerged, but with this difference, that in the case of the _mucor_ the
changes in question, and the activity of nutrition under these new
conditions, are much more marked than in the case of those other
organisms. The spores grow larger and the filaments of mycelium which do
develop are much stronger than those in the normal plant. These
filaments put forth, here and there, other filaments which detach
themselves and vegetate at the side of the others, being terminated or
interrupted by chains of large cells, species of spores which can live
by budding and reproducing cells similar to themselves or by elongating
into filaments.
Plate V. represents the living plant submerged at a little depth, and
having, consequently, still at its disposal a certain quantity of air,
insufficient, however, to supply the oxygen needed for all the acts of
nutrition. In this case the _mucor_ appears very different,
morphologically, from what it is when in free contact with air. Here it
forms short filaments, having a diameter double or triple that of the
filaments of the ordinary mycelium with branches and buds all over, and
what is especially characteristic, forming a network of chains of cells,
sometimes spherical, sometimes oval or pear-shaped, which are the actual
spores. These, as soon as they are detached, bud in their turn, and
reproduce either cells or branching tubes; these cells or the chaplets
which they form being known under the name _mycelian spores_ or
_conidia_. Our plate gives these different aspects very correctly, and
affords us a good idea of the luxuriant state of this remarkable
vegetation.
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