444 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL EXP. STA. RESEARCH BULLETIN NO. 12 

 TABLE No. 1. THE SOLUBILITY OF CAROTIN IN BILE. 



*The blank is the amount of color extracted from 5 c.c, of bile alone, 

 after desiccation with plaster of Paris. 



An interesting feature in the above table is the apparent greater 

 solubility of carotin in the bile of HJolstein cows, than in the bile of 

 Jersey cows. If this is confirmed by future study, considerable sig- 

 nificance could be attached to it in explaining, at least partly, the 

 differences between the two breeds in the amount of carotin that is 

 secreted in the milk fat. 



CHARACTER OF THE PIGMENTS ALONG THE DIGESTIVE TRACT 



The plan in this part of the study was to examine the pigments 

 which could be extracted from the material at various places along the 

 digestive tract of several cows. Material was obtained from one Hol- 

 stein cow and two Jersey cows at slaughtering, from each of the three 

 stomachs just before the food entered the next part of the digestive 

 tract, from three places in the small intestines, from the caecum, and 

 from the large intestine. One or two hundred grams of material were 

 either dried on the steam bath or desiccated with plaster of Paris, and 

 the resulting mass in either case extracted with CS 2 . The solubility, 

 spectroscopic, and adsorption properties of the extracted pigments were 

 carefully noted. The pigments were thus differentiated into carotin 

 and xanthophyll constituents as well as classified as belonging to 

 either of the two groups. 



The results of the study were not satisfactory, in that there was 

 no uniformity among the several cows in regard to the character 

 of the pigments found at any particular place, although all the animals 

 were receiving a ration which should have furnished an excess of both 

 carotin and xanthophylls. The reason for this is not obvious. It 

 might be thought that the partial drying in some cases destroyed the 

 pigments. Possibly this occurred to some extent, but it would not 



