Our readers may be curious to know what M. Fremy has been able to oppose to such crucial experiments; they could scarcely have imagined the following:— “In my experiments, which I have varied in every possible manner,” says that gentleman, “I have found that it is almost impossible to discover alcoholic fermentation, appreciable by its results, in a single drop of grape juice, and I may add that this fermentation must be still more difficult to discover when this drop has been drowned in a large quantity of juice that has been previously boiled.”[37] It will be admitted that we were justified in saying, at the commencement of this paragraph, that we should demolish the theory which was opposed to ours, and which its advocates have been constrained to defend by hypotheses manifestly false. At the meeting following the one in which M. Fremy declared _that minute quantities do not ferment_, we had the malicious satisfaction of showing a great many very small closed flasks, into each of which we had caused a single drop of the must of crushed grapes to be introduced by suction. We broke the thin points of many of them, in the presence of the Academy, and every one of them showed by a sharp hissing, which was audible at a distance, that fermentation was proceeding in the drop of liquid they contained. M. Fremy was there, but he made no remark. We may cite some very curious facts on the subject of the period at which the germs that develop yeast are in a condition to be able to cause fermentation. On July 25th, 1875, in the neighbourhood of Arbois (Jura), the grapes were still green and of the size of peas. We went to a vine that was far from paths and roads, and there, with a pair of small scissors, cut some grapes from off a bunch and let them fall with their short stalks into tubes half filled with gooseberry must, previously rendered unalterable by boiling. These tubes we closed again with all possible precautions, using corks which had been passed through the flame of a spirit-lamp and carried them to our laboratory, where we left them to themselves. Some days afterwards we saw diverse fungoid growths appear in most of the tubes, but not one of them then, or subsequently, presented the least appearance of fermentation. The germs of yeast at that period of the year did not exist either upon the woody part of the bunch, or upon the grapes. In Chapter V. we shall return to observations on this subject. § IV.—Wort and Must Exposed to Common Air.