4 i4 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



equivalent nor any other method affording more than an approxi- 

 mation to the truth. Great stress was laid on the subtle princi- 

 ples now considered essential to nutrition ; in fact, the meeting 

 was fast drifting into the position that all nutrition is a matter 

 of subtle principles when it was sharply pulled up by Dr. 

 Crowther, who delivered a spirited defence of starch equiva- 

 lents. Dr. Crowther declined to break off with the old love 

 till he knew more of the new and emphasised the marked services 

 rendered to agricultural chemistry by the admittedly imperfect 

 methods now on their trial. The agricultural chemist is under 

 the daily necessity of advising farmers as to the purchase of 

 feeding stuffs and it is futile to condemn methods which do 

 work in a way until new methods are forthcoming. The 

 position finally reached was that the nutrition of an animal 

 depends not only on the supply "of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, 

 etc., of which the agricultural chemist already takes cognisance 

 but also on certain subtle compounds wanted probably only in 

 small quantity ; furthermore, that the molecular structure of 

 the compounds wanted in large quantity {e.g. the proteins) must 

 be considered. Although this perhaps represented no very 

 great advance, it was satisfactory to find that there was so close 

 an agreement between the views held by the physiologist, the 

 agricultural chemist and the practical farmer. It was still more 

 satisfactory to agricultural chemists to find that difficulties 

 which had arisen in the course of their animal nutrition work 

 are already under consideration by physiologists and apparently 

 in a fair way to being solved. 



Such is a general impression of the result of discussion. 

 Before passing to the remarks of the various speakers, it 

 may be pointed out that the practical farmer long ago learnt 

 how to fatten animals and that he has a store of empirical 

 knowledge on the subject. Great stress is laid on regularity 

 of meals, quietness, etc. ; it is noteworthy indeed, as was 

 remarked at the meeting, that the details of the methods of 

 fattening bullocks given by one very successful farmer were 

 surprisingly similar to those adopted for human beings in sana- 

 toria. Thus the animals are regularly turned out at the same 

 hour each morning, fed with weighed quantities of food at 

 regular intervals, cleaned up and bedded for the night at a 

 definite hour ; and each one is kept under close observation. 



The main difficulty in conducting experiments on the nutri- 



