176 Journal of Agriculture, Victoria. [11 March, 191S. 



King, the position is reversed. At Wyuna the results were very notice- 

 able; here the late sown King's Early yielded 9.9 bushels to the acre 

 better than the same variety sown early, and with Yandilla King the 

 difference due to early sowing was 13.2 bushels per acre. 



It is evident, therefore, from these and similar results obtained in 

 other years, that a judicious selection of early, mid-season, and late 

 varieties is necessary to get the most profitable results on the average 

 wheat farm. 



THE IMPORTANCE OF BUTTER FAT IN HUMAN DIET. 



{Reprinted from " The Dairi/.'^) 



Prof. E. V. McCollum, a well-known investigator in food values, 

 has completed a course of experiments extending o^•er ten years into the 

 values of dairy products, and he has arrived at the conclusion that they 

 should be used freelj^, regardless of cost. He declares that in human 

 dietaries the safe plan is : Protect the dairy industry, no matter what 

 effects may come to us, and how expensive it may become to produce 

 dairy products. The dairy industry is the greatest safeguard to nutritive 

 food. If we did away with the dairy industry we would soon become 

 an inefficient people compared with what we are. 



Recently, Prof. E. V. McCollum gave an address on the subject of 

 his ten years' experiments at the University of Wisconsin, the title of 

 the lecture being " What we should Eat during the War," and the follow- 

 ing is a report of a portion of his remarks : — 



" Ten years ago, when I took up the study of nutrition, the text-books, 

 both on human nutrition and dietetics of the animal production, 

 enumerated as the constituents of food : proteins, carbohydrates and fats, 

 and inorganic salts. Now, it so happens that several people in Scan- 

 dinavia, England, and some other European countries, who are physiolo- 

 gists, had already taken purified proteids and purified nitrates and 

 combined these with purified fats. When analyzed, such a mixture 

 of food shows it has proper protein contents, proper amounts of digestive 

 nutrients, and yet, if an animal is fed on such stuff, all the time from 

 birth until old age, the nutrition is a complete failure. 



The first effort ever made in the investigation of nutrition problems 

 was to find out why an animal does not thrive on these mixed or purified 

 foodstuffs. To make a long story short, there are, in addition to 

 proteins, carbohydrates and fats, and inorganic salts, two still unidenti- 

 fied substances that one must have in the diet. One of these — which I 

 will call a water soluble unknown— is everywhere except in the purified 

 foods which I have just mentioned. They are relatively poor in this 

 substance — so are commercial starch and fats. Not a great deal is 

 known about it, except that it is soluble. Therefore, I will refer to it 

 as water soluble unknown. It can be taken from corn or any other seeds, 

 from plants, also from milk. It seems to be everywhere except in this 

 little list of foodstuffs. If the diet of an animal does not contain this 

 water soluble unknown, provided the diet is made up of sugars, starch, 



