206 Chittenden and Lambert—Post-mortem Formation of Sugar. 
changing peptone into carbohydrates is the fact that in our experi- 
ments the same increase of carbohydrates is to be noticed after 24 
hours’ contact with peptone as after a shorter time; in fact in our 
experiments, time appears to have no noticeable influence on the total 
carbohydrates whatever, unless the like results in Experiment XIII 
are taken as confirmation of Seegen’s statement that after a time the 
newly formed sugar is decomposed and thus the content of total car- 
bohydrates falls back to its original amount ; but in this experiment 
there is no evidence that the total carbohydrates ever were larger in 
amount. While our results therefore corroborate Seegen’s and Krat- 
schmer’s statements regarding an increase of carbohydrates in the 
presence of peptone, we cannot consider that the slight increase in 
question, far less than that recorded in their experiments, is suffi- 
ciently pronounced to decide conclusively upon such an important 
theory. Furthermore, the noticeable lack of increase in sugar in the 
presence of peptone, excepting such increase as is attended with de- 
crease in glycogen, is an additional reason for not attaching as much 
importance to the slight increase in total carbohydrates alone, as 
might otherwise be done. Consequently we must conclude that, in 
our opinion, the results obtained in these experiments do not warrant 
the adoption of this theory regarding the origin of the liver sugar, 
and that without further proof to the contrary we must sull adhere 
to the formation of liver sugar from the hepatic glycogen. 
