FERLAND FERMENTATION 141 English, and the whole work, with the excep- tion of some passages which have been since liscovered, was published in London in 1829 )y Col. John Briggs, under the title of " The listory of the Rise and Progress of the Mo- lammedan Power in India, from its commence- lent in 1000 to 1620." Col. Briggs also pub- ished an edition in Persian at Bombay in 1831. FERLAND, Jean Baptiste Antoinc, a Canadian his- torian, born in Montreal, Dec. 25, 1805, died in Quebec, Jan. 8, 1864. He was ordained priest in 1828, and afterward appointed professor of listory in Laval university. He published a re- view of Brasseur de Bourbourg's " History of Canada ;" " Notes on the first Register of Quebec;" "Journal of a Voyage on the Coast of Gaspesie;" "Labrador;" and a "Life of Bishop Plessis." At the time of his death he was engaged on a " Course of Canadian His- tory ;" the first volume had appeared, and the second was in the press. FERMANAGH, an inland county of Ireland, >rovince of Ulster, bordering on the counties )onegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, Cavan, and Lei- trim; area, 714 sq. m. ; pop. in 1871, 92,688. It lies almost wholly in the basin of Lough ilrne, which divides it lengthwise into two learly equal portions. Its S. W. part is rnoun- unous, and the N. E. part rises into steep lills. The soil is as varied as the surface, but except a wide belt in the south is not remark- ibly fertile. The productions are oats, barley, r heat, flax, potatoes, turnips, and hay. Cattle are bred on the high grounds, and butter, eggs, "JC M are exported. Limestone, marl, potter's jlay, and small quantities of coal and iron, are the chief mineral products. Timber is more ibundant than in most Irish counties, but is rown principally on the large estates, many of the county having a desolate appear- ice. There are no important manufactures, id few large towns ; those worthy of notice Enniskillen, Lisnaskea, and Lowtherstown. FERMAT, Pierre de, a French mathematician, born in southern France in August, 1601, died in Toulouse, Jan. 12, 1665. He studied law, and became in 1631 councillor at the parliament )f Toulouse, devoting his leisure to mathemati- cal studies. D'Alembert, Lagrange, and other Yench authorities claim for him the honor of iving been the principal inventor of the differ- ential calculus ; and Laplace states that it was due to Fermat and his colaborer, Pascal. His theories are chiefly contained in his treatise De Maximis et Minimis, republished in 1679 with his miscellaneous scientific writings. Descartes combated his propositions concerning the cal- culus, and Fermat opposed Descartes's views in respect to geometry and optics. FERMENTATION (Lat. fermentum, leaven, a contraction of fermmentum, from fervere, to boil), the conversion of an organic substance into one or more new compounds, under the influence of a body which is called a ferment. It is a process which with more or less skill has been employed from the earliest times in the manufacture of alcoholic beverage?, but its philosophy has been but imperfectly understood until recent times, and several questions still remain involved in doubt, and are matters of warm controversy. Formerly chemists recog- nized four kinds of fermentation, the vinous, the panary, the acetous, and the putrefactive ; but now the panary is included in the. vinous, while other kinds have been added, the number not being definitely settled. The following list may be given as the one usually recognized, although it will be seen that some of them are probably parts of the processes of others: 1, saccharine; 2, alcoholic or vinous; 3, acetic; 4, lactic ; 5, butyric ; 6, mucous or viscous ; 7, putrefactive. To these there might be added without impropriety the benzoic, in which the amygdaline of the bitter almond, under the influence of emulsine, forms prussic acid and other bodies ; and the sinapic, in which oil of mustard is produced during fermentation of the flour of black mustard. The act of digestion may also not improperly be regarded as a species of fermentation, because it involves, under the influence of minute organic cells, furnished by the mucous coat of the stomach, a transformation of proteine compounds into albuminose, which is just as truly a change by the influence of a ferment as the formation of lactic acid from lactic sugar, or of glucose from dextrine. 1. Saccharine Fermentation. In the article BREWING is described the process for the malting of barley, in which the produc- tion of diastase from albuminous matter accom- panies the evolution of the grain into plumula and radicle. This diastase is the ferment of saccharine fermentation, by whose influence the starch of the grain is converted into sugar ; the steps in the process being, first, the formation of soluble starch, then dextrine or gum, which next passes into glucose or grape sugar. Starch, soluble starch, and dextrine have the same chemical constitution, or more strictly speaking have the same proportion of elements, and may therefore be considered as allotropic conditions of each other. The transformation of dextrine into glucose consists in the assimilation of the elements of water, and may be represented in the following equation : C 6 H 10 5 Dextrine. H 2 = C 6 H 12 6 Water, Glucose. There is usually at the same time produced a small quantity of lactic acid, in consequence of a catalytic action, probably of the diastase, by which the glucose, having the same proportion of elements as lactic sugar, but differently grouped, takes on the functions of the latter sub- stance and splits up into lactic acid. The sac- charine fermentation, which takes place in malt- ing, is promoted by the action of heat, which should commence at about 85 and terminate at about 135 F. ; but in a decoction of malt, as in the mash tun of the brewer, it is conducted at a higher temperature, from 158 to 167. The drying of the malt in kilns* at this stage arrests
