Helmholtz separated a putrefying or a fermenting liquid from one which was simply putrescible or fermentable by a membrane which allowed the fluids to pass through and become intermixed, but stopped the passage of solids.

The result was, that while the putrescible or the fermentable liquids became impregnated with the results of the putrescence or fermentation which was going on on the other side of the membrane, they neither putrefied (in the ordinary way) nor fermented; nor were any of the organisms which abounded in the fermenting or putrefying liquid generated in them.

By this method they may be kept for years without putrefying, fermenting, or getting mouldy.

"Plants have been described by naturalists, who would determine the limits of the two kingdoms, as organized living bodies, without volition or locomotion, destitute of a mouth or intestinal cavity, which, when detached from their place of growth, die, and, in decay, ferment, but do not putrefy, and which, on being subjected to analysis, furnish an excess of carbon and no nitrogen.

" FEARFUL STATE OF BATTLEFIELDS Dead men and horses, heaped up by thousands, lay putrefying on the battlefields of the Aisne, Colonel Webb C. Hayes, U.S.A., son of former President Hayes, declared in Washington on Oct. 7, on his return from observing the war and its battlefields.

"When I left Havre on Sept. 27," he said, "the Allies were fearful that they would not be able to penetrate to the German line through the mass of putrefying men and horses on the battlefields, which unfortunately the combatants seem not to heed about burying.

He will soon be more closely viewed, or more attentively examined; and what folly has taken for a comet, that from its flaming hair shook pestilence and war, inquiry will find to be only a meteor, formed by the vapours of putrefying democracy, and kindled into flame by the effervescence of interest, struggling with conviction; which, after having plunged its followers in a bog, will leave us, inquiring why we regard it.

All such work of vegetable organisms, whether going on in the moulding cheese, in the souring of milk, in putrefying meat, in rotting fruit, or in decomposing fruit juice, is essentially one of fermentation, caused by these minute forms of plant life.

He told of the sequel, the hundred and thirty men, women and babes slaughtered in the dungeon of the Glacière; of Choisi's Dragoons and Grenadiers at the gates, and how, with roses scattered before them, they marched through the streets to the Castle, entered the gateway and paused, brought to a stand by the stench of putrefying flesh.

These people, also, have the means of producing a very severe cold; by which, the dead body continues so long above ground without putrefying; and by means of which, if any one sets a vessel of ale or water in the place, they contrive that the liquor shall be frozen either in winter or summer.

This putrefying flesh into which we eat our waythis carrion cart of your paltry pains and foolish pleasuresis but the rotten relic of an animal relationship.

With shaven heads, and clad in the deep saffron cloth such as the ascetic wanderer of India still wears, furnished only with a bowl for the unasked offerings of the pious and compassionate, they went their way, free from the cares and desires of this putrefying world.

But all day and all night the sickly stench of vegetation, putrefying in the steam of those forests from age to age, pervaded the ship as with the breath of plague.

There was the same heaving and putrefying mass,the same ghastly objects of every kind,the grey-headed old man, the dark-haired maiden, the tender infant,all huddled together.

The luminous appearance which some putrefying substances, particularly fish, present at night, is due to the slow combustion of phosphorus which takes place as this element escapes into the air from the decomposing tissues.

Earth, fire, water, he said, ought never, under any circumstances, to be defiled by contact with putrefying flesh.

Treat this human muck-heap even as you would ordinary sewage or manure, and who does not know that the very same putrefying mass of corruption which if allowed to remain near our doors would breed nothing but fever, cholera, and the worst forms of disease and death, when removed to a little distance, will double and treble the ordinary fertility of the soil and produce crops that will increase the wealth of the entire nation?

It is now more than ten years since I first commenced a series of experiments with a view of thoroughly testing various methods of purifying sewage and water contaminated with putrefying organic matter.

The skies above us are dark with sentimentalism, the sand beneath us is shoaling fast, we are running with streaming canvas upon ruin; all ideals have gone; nothing remains to us for worship but the Mass, the blind, inchoate, insatiate Mass; fog and fen land before us, we shall founder in putrefying mud, creatures of the ooze and rushes about uswe, the great ship that has floated up from the antique world.

Wherever man is, there may you hear its sibilant whisper, and its foul spawn squirm and sting and poison in nests of hidden noisomeness, myriad as the spores of corruption in a putrefying carcass, varying in size from some hydra-headed infamy endangering whole nations and even races with its deadly breath, to the microscopic wrigglers that multiply, a million a minute, in the covered cesspools of private life.

Swarms of flies were black upon them, browsing on their putrefying flesh, from which a stench came poisoning the air and rising above the scent of flowers and the sweet smell of hay in eddying waves of abominable odour.

Then they remained immovable, the water filtering through the cracks and crannies of their texture, protecting their delicate flesh with a bristling of spikes,sharp limestone needles with which they pierced the passing fishes and rendered them immovable, availing themselves of the nourishment of their putrefying remains.

From the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, there is nothing but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores.

The skies above us are dark with sentimentalism, the sand beneath us is shoaling fast, we are running with streaming canvas upon ruin; all ideals have gone; nothing remains to us for worship but the Mass, the blind, inchoate, insatiate Mass; fog and fen land before us, we shall founder in putrefying mud, creatures of the ooze and rushes about uswe, the great ship that has floated up from the antique world.

One day the dead body of an Indian who had been killed by the Spaniards was found on the plain, and although it was already putrefying, they secretly cut it into bits which they afterwards boiled or roasted, assuaging their hunger with that meat as though it were peacock.