140 ORIGIN OF BILE 



cretions in the limbs or in the bladder are utterly un- 

 known. 4 



42. That which must be viewed as an undeniable 

 truth in regard to the origin of the bile, or, more ac- 

 curately speaking, of choleic acid in the carnivora, 

 cannot hold in regard to all the constituents of the bile 

 secreted by the liver in the herbivora, for with the 

 enormous quantity of bile produced, for example, by 

 the liver of an ox, it is absolutely impossible to sup- 

 pose, that all its carbon is derived from the metamor- 

 phosed tissues. 



Assuming the 59 oz. of dry bile (from 37 Ibs. of 

 fresh bile secreted by an ox) to contain the same per- 

 centage of nitrogen as choleic acid (3-85 per cent.), 

 this would amount to nearly 2 oz. of nitrogen ; and 

 if this nitrogen proceed from metamorphosed tissues, 

 then, if all the carbon of these tissues passed into the 

 bile, it would yield, at the utmost, a quantity of bile 

 corresponding to 7'15oz. of carbon. This is, how- 

 ever, far below the quantity which, according to obser- 

 vation, is secreted in this class of animals. 



43. Other substances, besides compounds of pro- 

 teine, must inevitably take part in the formation of bile 

 in the organism of the herbivora ; and these substances 

 can only be the non-nitrogenized constituents of their 

 food. 



44. The sugar of bile of Gmelin (picromel or biline 

 of Berzelius), which Berzelius considers as the chief 

 constituent of bile, while Demargay assigns that place 

 essentially to choleic acid, burns, when heated in the 



