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Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



animals were weighed once per week always at the same hour, and the milk 

 fat was tested by the Gerber method in tubes previoiisly eheelved by the Adams 

 paper coil method. The goats were housed at the Albert Agricultural College, 

 and experimental work was performed partly there and partly at the College 

 of Science. 



The details of the original scheme are outlined in Table I. 



Table I. 



Simultaneously it was shown, by tests on rats, that the defieient diet fed to goat I 

 contained but a trace, if any, of vitamin A, and that fed to goat II similarly lacked 

 vitamin B, and, by tests on guinea pigs, that the diet of goat III was likewise deficient in 

 vitamin C. 



Unfortunately goat III did not give sufficient milk to warrant i^roceeding 

 with her, and consequently the test with vitamin C was necessarily abandoned. 

 Goats I and II gave a good flow of milk and remained quite normal for a 

 time; but after some weeks of lactation both became constipated, and their 

 weight dropped. This produced a temporary disturbance in the yields of 

 milk and butter fat, and in order to restore normal health the diet was 

 necessarily so altered temporarily that some vitamins were incidentally given 

 to the animals during the convalescent stage. The disturbance in general health 

 was not due, however, to lack of vitamins in the previous diet, because normal 

 health continued on that same diet supplemented by an extra half-pint of 

 linseed oil per week — a material known to contain none of these substances. 

 It became necessary to feed the two animals for another considerable period 

 on diet free from vitamin A and B respectively in order to exhaust any 

 vitamin reserve in the body before applying a test. In this connexion it 



