194 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
The Prestpent: Although this paper has been quite exhaus- 
tive, I have no doubt that some members would like to ask 
questions. 
Mr. Witicox: We have, I am sure, been greatly interested in 
Professor Atwater’s paper, and I would like to ask whether one 
animal by eating the flesh of another can transform that food 
into fats. 
Prof. ATwaTer: A great deal of experimental study has been 
devoted to the precise question to which you refer, during the 
past thirty years, and it may be thirty years more before it is 
fully answered. We have, however, a great deal of information 
already; enough to prove that the protein of one animal may be 
transformed into fat in the body of another. Dogs fed on lean 
meat have been proven to grow fat upon it in the limited sense 
that some of the protein of which the lean-meat was composed 
was changed into fat and stored as fat in the bodies of the dogs, 
It is quite possible that a portion of the protein of the beef 
steak which you and I may have eaten for breakfast this morn- 
ing, is during the course of the day, being changed into fat and 
carbo-hydrates. But how much of the protein of our food is 
transformed into fats, or how much of the fats in our bodies 
comes from the protein we eat, are matters which cannot, in 
the present state of our knowledge, be answered exactly. 
The members of the Association then visited the Central 
Hatching Station of the United States Fish Commission in the 
armory building, east of the Smithsonian grounds, where they 
saw a model of the McDonald fishway in operation, and the 
hatching of shad in the McDonald hatching jars. 
