M. Béchamp, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier, disdaining to adopt the expressions which we have just used, has substituted for them that of _microzyma_, whilst adhering to the opinions and errors represented by the other expressions. This savant designates under the name of _microzyma_ all those punctiform globulines that are met with in most organic liquids when submitted to the microscope; and attributes to them, with Turpin, the faculty of playing the part of ferments, as well as of transforming themselves into yeast and various other organisms. They are contained in milk, blood, eggs, the infusion of barley, and such like; nay, we may even find them in chalk, and so we have the fine discovery of _Microzyma cretae_ as a distinct species! Those who, like ourselves, cannot see in these granulations of organic liquids ought besides things whose nature is still undetermined, term them _molecular granules_, or, in reference to their Brownian movements, _mobile granules_. Indefinite expression is the best exponent of imperfect knowledge; when a precise terminology is invented, without any basis of precise ideas derived from a rigid observation of facts, sooner or later the hypothetical facts disappear, but the terminology prematurely created to explain them, hangs about the Science, and, bearing an erroneous interpretation, retards rather than promotes real progress. We may here introduce a summary of Turpin’s system, as given by himself. It forms a complete biogenesis, which leaves far behind it M. Béchamp’s theory of _microzymata_, M. Fremy’s descriptions of _hemi-organism_, and M. Trécul’s account of the genesis of bacteria and lactic ferment:— “When a mucous substance presents nothing visible through the microscope, as, for example, gelatinous matter, dissolved gum, the white of eggs, or plant-sap, simply thickened on its way to _cambium_, we call it _organic matter_ or _organizable matter_. We attribute to it the fecundating power of organic life in the simplest degree; we consider it as material still isolated from organization. We suppose that the invisible molecules, of which this organizable matter is composed, come together, combine and serve through this association in the construction of the different elementary forms of future tissues. “May we not with greater truth believe that organizable matter is of varied origin, formed of innumerable globulines, too minute and transparent as yet to be observed by our present microscopical means, and that these globulines which are always endowed with motion and a special vital centre, are all capable, although many of them _do_ abort, of separate development either into a formative element of tissue or into a mucedinous plant? “Organizable matter may, according to its successive states of development or age, and according to the different forms it takes in the tissues, be distinguished by special names:—