THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. E71 
The PresipENt: I would like to suggest to the gentlemen of 
the Executive Committee, and also to the officers for the ensu- 
ing year, that during the present meeting there be held a con- 
ference for consultation. We are sadly in need of rules and 
regulations, and have no order of business, and I think it desir- 
able to move in this matter as our Association is rapidly growing 
in size and importance. 
THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION AND NUTRITIVE 
VALUE OF OUR AMERICAN FOOD FISHES 
AND INVERTEBRATES. 
BY, W.<.@. “AVG Wea TR 
At the meetings of the American Fish-Cultural Association in 
1880 and 1881, I had the pleasure of presenting some brief state- 
ments of the results of an investigation of the chemistry of fish 
and marine invertebrates, which has been going on for some 
years past in the chemical laboratory of Wesleyan University, 
under the auspices of the United States Fish Commission and 
the Smithsonian Institution. 
Since the papers referred to were presented to the Associa- 
tion, the investigation has been continued so as to include chem- 
ical analyses of the flesh of some one hundred specimens of 
food-fishes, embracing fifty-one species, and sixty-four speci- 
mens of invertebrates, oysters, lobsters, etc., embracing eleven 
species, making in all one hundred and eighty-two specimens of 
sixty-two species. 
Besides the analyses, the range of the investigation has been 
extended so as to include two other, but closely related, topics. 
One of these is the digestibility of the flesh of fish as compared 
with that of mammals used for food, e. g., beef, mutton, etc. The 
other line of research is more purely chemical, and consists in 
the study of the constitution of the compounds of which the tis- 
sues of the fish are composed. 
