Note 41 — Chapter III · On the Origin of Ferments properly so called.

It has already been observed in our Memoir on spontaneous generation, that alcoholic fermentation is not always to be obtained by sowing wads of cotton or asbestos, charged with the particles of dust which float through the air, in saccharine musts that are in contact with much air. The air which furnished the particles of dust, in the experiments to which we are alluding, was taken outside the laboratory, in a neighbouring street.