104 Report of Department of Animal Industry of the 



bolism, but when the phosphorus is added to a phosphorus-poor 

 diet, the reverse is true. The same results were given by soluble 

 organic phosphorus. These authors state that the phosphorus of 

 bran is very readily absorbed, but that the nitrogen, on the other hand, 

 is utilized very poorly; and quote Girard and Lindet^ as having 

 arrived at the same conclusion in their work upon rabbits. This, if 

 true, is interesting with respect to the nitrogen in that it shows a 

 marked difference in the nutritive economy among the species of 

 herbivorous animals, for it is the common experience of agricultural 

 chemists that cattle utilize bran proteins very well.^ In Table III 

 it is sho'vvn that our animal assimilated over 60 per ct. of the nitro- 

 genous constituents of the rations, 78 per ct. of which was derived 

 from wheat, and almost half of this from the bran. The other 

 paper relates to an extensive experiment upon rats by Gregersen,^ 

 in which his purpose was to demonstrate that inorganic phosphorus 

 is synthesized into protein phosphorus by the animal organism. 

 He states definitely that there is a parallelism between the 

 phosphorus and nitrogen elimination. 



Secheret,^ studying the therapeutic value of phytin, claims that 

 this phosphorus compound stimulates protein metabolism and 

 increases the nitrogen elimination, but this is in direct conflict with 

 the observations of Rogosinski,^ who also worked on man. This 

 latter author found no relation whatsoever between the protein and 

 phosphorus metabolism when phytin, lecithin, and disodium phos- 

 phate were fed. 



The experiments of this Station do not show any very striking 

 relationships between these two excreted products; there is, however, 

 an apparent resemblance between the curve of nitrogen and total 

 phosphorus intake and outgo, as is shown in Figure 1. As Le Clerc 

 and Cook state, the addition of phosphorus to a phosphorus-poor 

 ration is followed by a decrease of the nitrogen output, immediately 

 followed by an increase when the addition of phytate phosphorus 

 is discontinued. This parallelism is independent of the relations 

 between the apparent digestibihty of the nitrogen and phosphorus, 

 as is sho'wn in Table III. In drawing conclusions from the data of 

 this experiment, it must be borne in mind that the animal was not 

 in nitrogen equilibrium and the amount of rations voluntarily con- 

 sumed by the cow varied considerably in the latter period of the 

 experiment; however, if we review the former experiments of this 

 series and construct curves for them, we get very much the same 



^ Girard and Lindet Froment et sa monture, 1903. 



2 Jordan and Hall, U. S. Dept. Agr., 0. E. S. Bull. 77, p. 79. 



•■^ Gregersen, Ztschr. Physiol. Chem. 71: 49. 1901. 



^S^cheret; Th^se de Paris, 1904, p. 131, from Maly's Johrber. Tierehem., 34: 729. 

 1904. 



^Rogosinski Anz. Akad. Wiss. Krakau, B 1910, p. 260; from Chem. Centrbl, 

 31, II: 1558. 1910. 



