1903.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 33. 75 



Winterstein,! Stift,^ Stone,^ Lindsey and Holland,^ Witt- 

 maun^ and others, have shown the pentosans to be very 

 widely distributed in plants and seeds, and this general dis- 

 tribution naturally leads to an inquiry as to their nutritive 

 value in the animal economy. Several investigations have 

 been published relative to the ability of both men and ani- 

 mals to assimilate the sugars, xylose and arabinose. Ebsten^ 

 fed 25 grams of these sugars to men, and found this amount 

 in the urine in a short time. Cremer,^ on the other hand, 

 found only 10 grams of arabinose in the urine after feeding 

 25 grams to a healthy man. Salskowski^ concluded that 

 rab])its were able to assimilate a portion of this sugar, and 

 that as a result the per cent, of glycogen in the body is ma- 

 terially increased. Frentzel's^ investigations indicated that 

 glycogen could not be formed from xylose in the animal 

 organism, that the xylose prevented the destruction of sub- 

 stances that naturally produced glycogen, thus causing an 

 increase in the amount of this animal sugar in the body. 

 Salskowski '^^ found that a rabbit and hen excreted only a fifth 

 of the arabinose fed. 



Cross, Bevau and Remington " digested brewers' grains 

 with 1 per cent, sulphuric acid in an autoclave at 130° C, 

 neutralized, with carbonate of lime, filtered, evaporated the 

 solution, and obtained 39.5 per cent, of furfural in the dry 

 matter. The evaporated product, when mixed with gelatine 

 and bread and fed with vegetables to rabbits, proved to be 

 94.5 to 98.4 per cent, digestible, no furfural or pentoses 

 being recognized in the urine. The investigators claim that, 



^ Ziircher Diss., 1892, p. 31. 



- Osterr. Unger. Zeitsch. fiir Zucherindustrie, 1894, p. 925. 



^ Agricultural Science, 5, p. 6. 



■• Twelfth Report of Massachusetts Experiment Station, 1894, p. 175; Agri- 

 cultural Science, 8, p. 162 ; Proceedings of the sixteenth meeting of the Society 

 for the Promotion of Agricultural Science, 1895. 



^ Zeitsch. Landw. Versuchst. Osterr., 4, pp. 131-139. Abs. Exp. Sta. Rec, 13, 

 p. 420. 



" Centralblatt f. die medicin. Wissenschaften, 1892, p. 577. 



' Zeitsch. f. Biologie, 24, p. 484. 



' Centralblatt f. die medicin. Wissenschaften, 1893, p. 193. 



" Archw. f. d. ges. Physiologie, 56, p. 273. 

 '" Zeitsch. Physio. Chem., 1895, p. 491. 

 " Journal of the Am. Chem., Sec. 22, p. 633. 



