viii, B, 3 Vedder and Williams: Vitamines in Rice 179 



purine bases undoubtedly exerted some protective influence, we 

 tried a feeding experiment with allantoin. 



Experiment Al. — Five grams of allantoin were dissolved in 

 1,000 cubic centimeters of water. Four fowls were fed on 

 polished rice and in addition were given daily 10 cubic centi- 

 meters of this solution of allantoin or 50 milligrams daily. One 

 fowl developed neuritis in twenty days, one in twenty-five days, 

 and one in twenty-nine days. 



From this experiment it is concluded that allantoin does not 

 possess any protective action. 



Having used basic lead acetate as a precipitant in a previous 

 experiment, (3) the result of which was in doubt, we performed 

 the following experiment. 



Experiment ^2. — A quantity of extract of rice polishings was 

 precipitated by basic lead acetate. The precipitate was sepa- 

 rated from the filtrate and the lead was removed from both by 

 hydrogen sulphide. 



(a) Four fowls were fed on polished rice, and in addition were 

 given a daily dose of the substances precipitated by basic lead 

 acetate equivalent to 10 grams of polishings. One fowl de- 

 veloped neuritis in twenty-six days, one in thirty days, and one 

 in thirty-two days, when the experiment was discontinued. 



(&) Four fowls were fed on polished rice, and in addition 

 were given a daily dose of the substances not precipitated by 

 basic lead acetate equivalent to 10 grams of polishings. One 

 fowl developed neuritis in thirty days, but the remaining 3 

 fowls continued in good health for sixty days, when the experi- 

 ment was discontinued. 



From this experiment it is concluded that the neuritis-prevent- 

 ing substance is not precipitated by basic lead acetate, but 

 remains in the filtrate. However, since one of the fowls (prob- 

 ably highly susceptible to this disease) fed on this filtrate 

 developed neuritis, it appears that a portion of the neuritis- 

 preventing substances is lost as a result of the chemical manip- 

 ulation. After we had performed this experiment, we received 

 the paper of Edie, Evans, Moore, Simpson, and Webster (7) in 

 which they report obtaining a similar result after using lead 

 acetate in isolating the antineuritic substances from yeast. 



Before any of Funk's papers had reached us, we had tried (3) 

 precipitating our extract with phosphotungstic acid and had 

 decomposed the phosphotungstates with barium hydroxide. 

 We did not succeed in obtaining any protective action from 

 these decomposed phosphotungstates. Funk's work, whose es- 



