cessary to suppose that any water
has been decomposed during the experiment, unless it be pretended that
the oxygen and hydrogen exist in the sugar in that state. On the
contrary, I have already made it evident that hydrogen, oxygen and
charcoal, the three constituent elements of vegetables, remain in a
state of equilibrium or mutual union with each other which subsists so
long as this union remains undisturbed by increased temperature, or by
some new compound attraction; and that then only these elements
combine, two and two together, to form water and carbonic acid.

The effects of the vinous fermentation upon sugar is thus reduced to the
mere separation of its elements into two portions; one part is
oxygenated at the expence of the other, so as to form carbonic acid,
whilst the other part, being deoxygenated in favour of the former, is
converted into the combustible substance alkohol; therefore, if it were
possible to reunite alkohol and carbonic acid together, we ought to form
sugar. It is evident that the charcoal and hydrogen in the alkohol do
not exist in the state of oil, they are combined with a portion of
oxygen, which renders them miscible with water; wherefore these three
substances, oxygen, hydrogen, and charcoal, exist here likewise in a
species of equilibrium or reciprocal combination; and in fact, when they
are made to pass through a red hot tube of glass or porcelain, this
union or equilibrium is destroyed, the elements become combined, two and
two, and water and carbonic acid are formed.

I had formally advanced, in my first Memoirs upon the formation of
water, that it was decomposed in a great number of chemical experiments,
and particularly during the vinous fermentation. I then supposed that
water existed ready formed in sugar, though I am now convinced that
sugar only contains the elements proper for composing it. It may be
readily conceived, that it must have cost me a good deal to abandon my
first notions, but by several years reflection, and after a great number
of experiments and observations upon vegetable substances, I have fixed
my ideas as above.

I shall finish what I have to say upon vinous fermentation, by
observing, that it furnishes us with the means of analysing sugar and
every vegetable fermentable matter. We may consider the substances
submitted to fermentation, and the products resulting from that
operation, as forming an algebraic equation; and, by successively
supposing each o