y for heat, that though combined with oxygen and water,
it still possesses the property of absorbing a great deal more. It is
this property that renders aqueous vapour lighter than atmospheric air
in which it ascends; yet we have just now demonstrated the resolution
and combination of hydrogen gas, and oxygen gas, both extricated from
the fermentable matter and the water of dilution, and their formation
into spirit, &c., at a temperature not many degrees above that of the
incumbent atmosphere, and no higher than that excited by respiration in
the animal system.

In which we have shown the vegetable oxyde, (saccharine matter,) when
reduced by the admixture of water, to form the worts or wash, to be a
carbonated hydrogenous fluid, containing the elements of wine, beer,
ale, spirit, &c., and the mode of producing them under circumstances
conducive to their formation; these are motion, heat, pressure, and
mutual attraction, called into existence by a species of low
combustion, or fermentation, somewhat similar to respiration. In which
the materials, the products, and the liberation of caloric are
ultimately the same, whether the operation is attended by visible fire
from the velocity of action, or weak incalescence from the slow
progression of its motion; in which the component elements are
continually assuming a gasseous form, and as constantly losing it by
the force of mutual attraction for each other. No sooner is the
equilibrium broken, in one instance, by their gasseous appearance, than
it is restored by their condensation, and the heat liberated by the
latter taken up by the former, by which the equilibrium is preserved;
in this consists the increase of temperature above that of the
surrounding atmosphere, accompanied by the discharge of fixed air; to
fix, and advantageously apply which, shall be the next consideration;
and, by an accurate imitation of the modification employed by nature,
to render the fermenting fluid so much the stronger by such fixation.
To accomplish which, we must advert to what has been delivered in the
preceding pages, particularly to the proportions in which the
equilibrium preserved by nature consists, and exactly to her manner of
combining them in sugar, malt, and other saccharine matter, her mode of
breaking this equilibrium, or decomposing them by fermentation, and
recombining them into wine, beer, &c., and by the same process
restoring the equilibrium.

It cannot be doubted, but that, i