Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/210

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will be the effervescence, the agitation, and the heat.

2d, That the effervescence, the agitation, and the heat, are greater when the skins, the stones, the stalks, &c, are allowed to ferment with the juice, than when the juice is submitted to fermentation, separated from these matters.

3d, That the fermentation may raise the heat from the 59° to the 86° of Fahrenheit, at least it has been seen in activity between these extremes.

4th, That the fermentation is so much the stronger, as the vats are well covered. Without the precaution is taken to cover the vats, the fermenting matter receives, every instant, the impression of the very variable temperature of the atmosphere, and the fermentation being weakened or excited, according to this variation, is necessarily imperfect. Besides, when the vat is open, there is a loss of alcohol, and the wine is weaker, and deprived of a portion of its perfume.

Of the Disengagement of Carbonic Acid.

The carbonic acid gas, which is disengaged from the must, and its deleterious effects, have been known as long as fermentation itself.

This gas, escaping in bubbles from all points, is elevated to the surface, where it displaces the air of the atmosphere, and occupies, every where,