which we have just spoken, when the grapes are immersed in carbonic acid gas. By such a comparison as that which we suggest, we should be able to form an _à priori_ judgment on the merits of the new system, which has not been carefully studied, although already widely adopted, of milled, cylindrical crushers, for pressing the vintage. Footnote 124: We have sometimes found small quantities of alcohol in fruits and other vegetable organs, surrounded with ordinary air, but always in small proportion, and in a manner which suggested its accidental character. It is easy to understand how, in the thickness of certain fruits, certain parts of those fruits might be deprived of air, under which circumstance they would have been acting under conditions similar to those under which fruits act when wholly immersed in carbonic acid gas. Moreover it would be useful to determine whether alcohol is not a normal product of vegetation. Footnote 125: In these studies on plants living immersed in carbonic acid gas, we have come across a fact which corroborates those which we have already given in reference to the facility with which lactic and viscous ferments, and, generally speaking, those which we have termed the disease-ferments of beer, develop when deprived of air, and which shows, consequently, how very marked their aërobian character is. If we immerse beetroots or turnips in carbonic acid gas, we produce well-defined fermentations in those roots. Their whole surface readily permits the escape of the highly acid liquids, and they become filled with lactic, viscous, and other ferments. This shows us the great danger which may result from the use of pits, in which the beetroots are preserved, when the air is not renewed, and that the original oxygen is expelled by the vital processes of fungi, or other deoxidizing chemical actions. We have directed the attention of the manufacturers of beetroot sugar to this point. Footnote 126: LECHARTIER and BELLAMY, _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. lxix., pp. 366 and 466, 1869. Footnote 127: Those gentlemen express themselves thus: “In a note presented to the Academy in November, 1872, we published certain experiments which showed that carbonic acid and alcohol may be produced in fruits kept in a closed vessel, out of contact with atmospheric oxygen, without our being able to discover alcoholic ferment in the interior of those fruits.