Note 65 — Chapter IV · The Growth of Different Organisms in a State of Purity: Their Autonomy.[49]

Since writing this paragraph, we have found in M. Ch. Robin’s Journal d’Anatomie et de Physiologie, an article signed by that gentleman, and entitled Sur la Nature des Fermentations, &c. (July-August, 1875), in which the learned microscopist says:—“The torula cerevisiæ is derived from the mycoderma cerevisiæ. My observations leave no doubt on my mind that penicillium glaucum is one of the forms evolved from spores or ferments that have preceded it, as M. Trécul showed a long time ago, and that, moreover, the spores of penicillium, germinating in suitable media, give us the sporical form termed mycoderma.”

We take the liberty to observe that these assertions of M. Robin’s are purely gratuitous. Up to the present time it has been impossible to discover a suitable medium for the proof of these different transformations or polymorphisms. From the time of Turpin, who firmly believed that he had observed these changes, to our own, none of the microscopists who have affirmed these transformations have succeeded in adducing any convincing proof of them, and M. Trécul’s latest observations, especially as regards penicillium and its transformation into ferment or into the mycoderma of beer, have been positively disproved by ours, supported, as they are, by proofs that we consider irrefutable.