154 Report of Department of Animal Industry of the 



On boiling with normal sulphuric acid at ordinary pressure it is 

 slowly decomposed with formation of phosphoric acid and reducing 

 bodies, apparently carbohydrates, as the solution reduces Fehling's 

 solution and gives reactions with orcine and phloroglucine; but no 

 trace of inosite could be isolated. The unchanged portion isolated 

 from the reaction mixture has exactly the same composition as it 

 had before boiling, which indicates that the molecule is gradually 

 broken up into reducing bodies and phosphoric acid without suffer- 

 ing any intermediate or partial decomposition. 



On heating the substance in a sealed tube with 5/N sulphuric 

 acid the cleavage appears to go in another direction; for in this 

 case 90 per ct. of the total carbon was recovered in the form of 

 inosite and absolutely no reducing bodies were present in the reaction 

 mixture. No explanation can be offered at this time concerning 

 this peculiar behavior towards sulphuric acid under ordinary pressure 

 and in a sealed tube. 



It is evident that this compound is not phytin. The only similar- 

 ity between these substances is found in that they are both organic- 

 phosphoric acids and that when heated in a sealed tube with acids 

 they yield inosite as one of the products of decomposition. Whether 

 this new compound contains the inosite as such or whether it is 

 only formed in the process of decomposition cannot be definitely 

 determined at this time. However, if it were a complex compound 

 of inosite and phosphoric or pyrophosphoric acid, the isolation of 

 inosite should be possible after cleavage with dilute acid at ordinary 

 pressure. As has been stated, this cannot be done and, moreover, 

 the empirical formula of the substance can hardly be brought into 

 accord with any inosite compound. 



The substance is probably similar to, if not identical with, the 

 glucophosphoric acid described by Levene.^ The same author^ 

 also described an organic-phosphoric acid compound isolated from 

 hemp seed which gave reactions for pentose or glucoronic acid. 

 Smce phytin does not give these reactions, as stated by Neuberg,^ 

 it is very probable that the products examined by Levene were of 

 the same nature as that described in this paper. 



The chief support of the assumption of Patten and Hart* that 

 the organic-phosphorus compound of wheat bran was phytin was 

 no doubt based upon the fact that they had obtained a substance 

 from dilute hydrochloric-acid extract of bran which corresponded 

 closely in composition with that required for the " anhydro-oxyme- 

 thylene di-phosphoric acid " of Posternak. 



Serious objection, however, must be raised against their method 

 of isolating this substance in so far as they made absolutely no 



1 Jour. Amer. Chem. Soc 24: 190 (1902), and Amer. Jour. Physiol. 8: XI (1903). 

 ^ Biochem. Ztschr. 16: 399. 

 nhid. 16: p. 405. 

 * hoc. cit. 



