232 | REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [2] 
is of less immediate interest to any except the chemist and physiologist; 
but, if successfully carried out, its results will have most important 
bearings upon the more practical questions referred to. We must know 
more of the chemical constitution of the compounds that oceur in our 
foods and of their functions in nutrition before we can, with satis- 
factory accuracy, estimate their values and proper uses for food. At 
the same time, an approximate estimate of the nutritive values, and one 
commensurate with our present knowledge of the ingredients of foods and 
their functions, can be based upon analyses somewhat less detailed, even, 
than most of those here given. The analyses already made, though 
insufficient to permit as reliable generalizations as are to be desired, do, 
nevertheless, help toward an estimate of the composition and values of 
a number of our more common species of edible fish and invertebrates. 
Some of the results herewith reported are striking and unexpected. 
Among the different sorts of fish which the New York and Middletown 
markets furnished for my table, a sample of flounder contained only 5 
per cent. of dry edible solids, actual nutrients, the rest being water and 
refuse; while one of salmon yielded 33 per cent. of nutritive substance. 
The proportion of nutrients in salmon was nearly one-third larger than 
it would be in an ordinary slice of beef-steak ; that in flounder not one- 
fourth as large. 
Taking the fish at retail prices in Middletown markets, the total 
nutrients in stripede bass came to about $2.50 per pound; while in 
Connecticut River shad, whose price, thanks to our fish commissions, 
was very low, we bought the same nutrients at 44 cents per pound. 
In good beef they were costing about $1 per pound. 
It makes very little difference to the man with five thousand dollars 
a year whether he pays fifty cents or five dollars a pound for the albu- 
minoids in his food; but it does make a difference to the man who must 
pay his rent and support his family on five hundred dollars a year. The 
economical housewife who hesitates in the dry-goods store before taking 
a piece of calico at eleven cents a yard when she can get another that 
may do as good service for ten, goes to the market and unknowingly 
pays, perhaps, a dollar for a given amount of food, when she might have 
got the same materials in forms equally nutritious and wholesome, for 
fifty cents. 
The large amount of attention devoted to this kind of investigation 
in Europe has brought results capable of being successfully popular- 
ized. In Germany, tables giving the chemical composition and nutri- 
tive valuations of foods are becoming current among even the common 
people. An attempt toward a similar application of the results of the 
present work is given in tabular form in Part III. 
The details of the analytical work herewith reported have been per- 
formed for the most part by my friends and assistants, Messrs. W. H. 
Jordan, B.8., G. P. Merrill, B.S., C. D. Woods, B. S., and M. Beamer, 
C. E., for whose skillful aid I desire to express my thanks. 
