a card out of the bottom story, the result of which is that all the
others fall.

As chemistry advanced, facts came to light which put a new face upon
Stahl's hypothesis, and gave it a safer foundation than it previously
possessed. The general nature of these phenomena may be thus
stated:--A body, A, without giving to, or taking from, another
body, B, any material particles, causes B to decompose into other
substances, C, D, E, the sum of the weights of which is equal to the
weight of B, which decomposes.

Thus, bitter almonds contain two substances, amygdalin and synaptase,
which can be extracted, in a separate state, from the bitter almonds.
The amygdalin thus obtained, if dissolved in water, undergoes no
change; but if a little synaptase be added to the solution, the
amygdalin splits up into bitter almond oil, prussic acid, and a kind
of sugar.

A short time after Cagniard de la Tour discovered the yeast plant,
Liebig, struck with the similarity between this and other such
processes and the fermentation of sugar, put forward the hypothesis
that yeast contains a substance which acts upon sugar, as synaptase
acts upon amygdalin. And as the synaptase is certainly neither
organized nor alive, but a mere chemical substance, Liebig treated
Cagniard de la Tour's discovery with no small contempt, and, from
that time to the present, has steadily repudiated the notion that the
decomposition of the sugar is, in any sense, the result of the vital
activity of the _Torula_. But, though the notion that the _Torula_ is
a creature which eats sugar and excretes carbonic acid and alcohol,
which is not unjustly ridiculed in the most surprising paper that