ents, and means recommended, we are enabled to foresee and
provide for the changes induced by the alterations of the atmosphere,
we can guard against the inconveniences in some cases, and make them
subservient to our purpose in others; so as more securely to conduct
the process in each to advantage; and that with unusual facility;
complex as it at present appears: it will not only be a great
improvement in the present mode of fermentation; but facilitate our
progress to still greater improvements in the doctrine of fermentation.
Therefore, the rule of our conduct, in these pursuits, should be to
watch the operations of nature with the closest attention, and assist
her when languid, and control her when too violent; that is, by
spurring in one instance, and bridling in the other, and accurately and
undeviatingly apply the means proposed in the manner recommended, until
experience enables us to improve it; otherwise, we shall only admire,
without improving or profiting by her choicest phenomena.

The motions of the planets, perplexed and intricate as they must have
appeared in the infancy of astronomy, are now calculated and known with
ease and precision.

Attenuation is a term not unaptly applied to fermentation, the property
of attenuation being to divide, then dilute, and rarify thick, gross,
viscid, and dense substances, in which some degree of fluidity is
pre-supposed; it is, therefore, that kind of dilution or fluidity which
is promoted by agitation, and very aptly applied to mark the progress
of fermentation, which is itself the process of nature, for decomposing
vegetable and animal substances under a convenient degree of fluidity;
it exists in intestine motion, either spontaneous or excited,
accompanied with heat, which, under certain limits, is proportioned to
the vigour of the fermentation, which ends in the decomposition of one
class of bodies, and the composition of another; and which may be
instanced in the resolving saccharine substances into hydrogen, oxygen,
and carbon, and the combining them into inflammable spirits, or
alcohol, and inflammable acids or vinegar; to which may be added, the
lower you attenuate, the lighter and more spiritous the fermenting
fluid becomes; and that attenuation, which is the offspring of
fermentation, like the parent process, has its bounds, and can only be
conducted with certainty and advantage by the use of the hydrometer,
thermometer, &c. In this only lies the difference