separate. That discovery remained, so to speak, dormant for fully a
century, and then the question was taken up by a French discoverer,
who, paying great attention and having the advantage of better
instruments than Leeuwenhoek had, watched these things and made the
astounding discovery that they were bodies which were constantly being
reproduced and growing; than when one of these rounded bodies was once
formed and had grown to its full size, it immediately began to give off
a little bud from one side, and then that bud grew out until it had
attained the full size of the first, and that, in this way, the yeast
particle was undergoing a process of multiplication by budding, just as
effectual and just as complete as the process of multiplication of a
plant by budding; and thus this Frenchman, Cagniard de la Tour, arrived
at the conclusion--very creditable to his sagacity, and which has been
confirmed by every observation and reasoning since--that this
apparently muddy refuse was neither more nor less than a mass of
plants, of minute living plants, growing and multiplying in the sugary
fluid in which the yeast is formed. And from that time forth we have
known this substance which forms the scum and the lees as the yeast
plant; and it has received a scientific name--which I may use without
thinking of it, and which I will therefore give you--namely, "Torula."
Well, this was a capital discovery. The next thing to do was to make
out how this torula was related to the other plants. I won't weary you
with the whole course of investigation, but I may sum up its results,
and they are these--that the torula is a particular kind of a fungus, a
particular state rather, of a fungus or mould. There are many moulds
which under certain conditions give rise to this torula condition, to a
substance which is not distinguishable from yeast, and which has the
same properties as yeast--that is to say, which is able to decompose
sugar in the curious way that we shall consider by-and-by. So that the
yeast plant is a plant belonging to a group of the Fungi, multiplying