NINTH ANNUAL MEETING. 57 
146,and soon. The different samples of fish run from floun- 
ders, 65 ; cod, 68; shad, 99; whitefish, 103, to salmon, 104, while 
dried cod leads the list at 346. 
These figures differ widely from the market values. But we 
pay for our foods according, not to their value for nourishing 
our bodies, but to their agreeableness to our palates. 
CHEAP VERSUS DEAR FOOD. 
Taking the samples of fish at their retail prices in the Mid- 
dletown markets, the total edible solids in striped bass came to 
about $2.30 per pound, while in the Connecticut river salmon, 
_ whose price—thanks to our Fish Commission—was very low, we 
bought nutritive material at forty-four cents per pound. The 
cost of the nutritive material in one sample of halibut was fifty- 
seven cents, and in the other $1.45 per pound, though both were 
bought in the same place at the same price, fifteen cents per 
pound, gross weight. 
It makes very little difference to a man with five thousand 
dollars a year,whether he pays twenty-five cents or five dollars a 
pound for the albuminoids of his food, but it does make a differ- 
ence to the housewife whose family must live on five hundred 
dollars a year. Anda little definite knowledge of this sort will 
be of material help to her in furnishing her table economically. 
The cook-books and newspapers. have occasionally something 
to say upon these points, but their statements are apt to be as 
_ yague and wild as in the lack of authoritative information they 
might be expected to be. 
Of course the nutritive valuations above given are only ap- 
proximate, since they are made with very imperfect knowledge 
_ of either the digestibility of the foods or the influence of pala- 
' tibility and other factors upon their nutritive value, and also be- 
cause they are based upon very few analyses. But it is certain 
_ that we need to know more about these things, and that such in- 
vestigations as I have been telling you about may help us toward 
that knowledge. 
Before closing I sor a perhaps to refer briefly to the very 
