Maech 26, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



493 



■business is considered illegitimate as such, 

 but, carried on as it has been, it is incom- 

 patible with all the other interests which 

 the forest may subserve. Eoaming through 

 the woods, from township to township, from 

 county to count}'-, from State to State, the 

 herds not only destroy the herbage and 

 young trees and seedlings, but the irre- 

 sponsible herder burns over the pasture, 

 kills the underbrush and young growth 

 that may have sprung up. This treatment, 

 added to the trampling of the soil by the 

 sharp hoofs of the sheep, finally changes 

 the surface so that no seed can germinate, 

 and natural reproduction is prevented and 

 the forest is doomed to destruction. Just 

 ■as the proverbial incompatibility of the 

 ■goat and the garden, so the growing of wool 

 and wood on the same gound is incompati- 

 ble. 



Some of the provisions of the bills as 

 passed by the House do not meet the ap- 

 proval of the Executive Committee of the 

 American Forestry Association; neverthe- 

 less the main principle underlying, namely, 

 •the recognition of the legal status of the 

 ■forest-reservation policy and of the neces- 

 sity of their rational management, make it 

 desirable to have this legislation enacted, 

 •with the expectation of amending its faulty 

 provisions later. 



It is hoped that the 55th Congress will 

 fully recognize the wisdom of upholding 

 the forest reservation policy, and will enact 

 the legislation necessary to make the re- 

 servations useful to the fullest extent. 

 B. F. Feenow, 

 Chairman Executive Committee', 

 American Forestry Association. 



EXPERIMENTS UPON METAB0LIS3I IN TEE 

 BUM AN BODY, UNDER THE DIRECTION 

 OF THE UNITED STATES DEPART- 

 MENT OF AGRICULTURE. 

 The Department of Agriculture has re- 

 ceived and is about to publish the details 



of the experiments on the nutrition of man> 

 the brief reports of which have lately ex- 

 cited so much interest in different parts of 

 the country. These experiments are car- 

 ried out under the auspices of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, at Wesleyan Univer- 

 sity, in Connecticut, in cooperation with the 

 Storrs' Experiment Station. They belong 

 to a series of inquiries upon the economjr of 

 food and nutrition which are being prose- 

 cuted in cooperation with universities, col- 

 lege settlements and benevolent associations 

 in different parts of the country. The 

 special objects and methods of the experi- 

 ments in Connecticut are referred to by 

 Professor Atwater, special agent of the de- 

 partment in charge of nutrition investiga- 

 tions, as follows : 



" Research upon nutrition has brought us to the 

 point ■where the study of the application of the laws 

 of the conservation of matter and of energy in the 

 living organism are essential. For this purpose a 

 respiration calorimeter is being devised. This is an 

 apparatus in which an animal or a man may be 

 placed for a number of hours or days, and the 

 amounts and composition of the excreta, solid, 

 liquid and gaseous ; the amounts and composition of 

 the food and drink and inhaled air ; the potential 

 energy of the materials taken into the body and 

 given off from it ; the quantity of heat radiated from 

 the body, and the mechanical equivalent of the 

 muscular work done, are all to be measured." 



This apparatus includes a so-called respi- 

 ration chamber. This is practically a box 

 with copper lining. It is 7 feet long, 4 

 feet wide and 6J feet high, large enough 

 for a man to live in. It is provided with 

 glass doors, through which the subject en- 

 ters ; and with a chair, table and cot bed. A 

 current of air sufficient for ventilation 

 passes through the box. Arrangements are 

 made for passing in the food and drink and 

 removing the excretory products. The food, 

 drink and excretory products are all care- 

 fully weighed, measured and subjected to 

 chemical analysis. The ventilating current 

 of air is measured and analyzed. In this 

 way it is possible to learn just what ma- 



