possible to reunite alkohol and carbonic acid together, we ought to form
sugar. It is evident that the charcoal and hydrogen in the alkohol do
not exist in the state of oil, they are combined with a portion of
oxygen, which renders them miscible with water; wherefore these three
substances, oxygen, hydrogen, and charcoal, exist here likewise in a
species of equilibrium or reciprocal combination; and in fact, when they
are made to pass through a red hot tube of glass or porcelain, this
union or equilibrium is destroyed, the elements become combined, two and
two, and water and carbonic acid are formed.
I had formally advanced, in my first Memoirs upon the formation of
water, that it was decomposed in a great number of chemical experiments,
and particularly during the vinous fermentation. I then supposed that
water existed ready formed in sugar, though I am now convinced that
sugar only contains the elements proper for composing it. It may be
readily conceived, that it must have cost me a good deal to abandon my
first notions, but by several years reflection, and after a great number
of experiments and observations upon vegetable substances, I have fixed
my ideas as above.
I shall finish what I have to say upon vinous fermentation, by
observing, that it furnishes us with the means of analysing sugar and
every vegetable fermentable matter. We may consider the substances
submitted to fermentation, and the products resulting from that
operation, as forming an algebraic equation; and, by successively
supposing each of the elements in this equation unknown, we can
calculate their values in succession, and thus verify our experiments by
calculation, and our calculation by experiment reciprocally. I have
often successfully employed this method for correcting the first results
of my experiments, and to direct me in the proper road for repeating
them to advantage. I have explained myself at large upon this subject,
in a Memoir upon vinous fermentation already presented to the Academy,
and which will speedily be published.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] The above apparatus is described in the Third Part.--A.
106