404 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



sexual metabolism, and is not oxidised to carbon-dioxide 

 to supply muscular and other energy for the animal itself. 



The minute muscular metabolism is probably 

 explicable on two grounds; first, there is little or nothing 

 required for maintenance of temperature, and secondly, 

 the animal is balanced or counterpoised in the water, so 

 that the loss in locomotion and swimming up and down 

 is also reduced to a minimum. 



At the commencement of the experiments it was not 

 anticipated that at the conclusion of a fast of over thirty 

 days the weight of the lobsters would have remained 

 constant, or even slightly increased, while that of the 

 fish after a small initial drop would also remain practically 

 constant during a period of three weeks, throughout which 

 no food was taken. As a consequence no normal animals 

 of the same species and size were fixed for determination 

 of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in the tissues at the 

 start, and comparison of these with like data for the 

 experimental animals at the conclusion of the fast. 

 Accordingly from this set of experiments alone, no con- 

 clusion could be drawn as to whether the energy for the 

 metabolism was derived from a dilution, or water-logging 

 of the tissues, or possibly, as suggested by Putter, from 

 dissolved organic matter contained in the filtered sea- 

 water supplied daily to the animals. The excessively 

 minute amount of dissolved organic matter (if any) con- 

 tained in sea-water as shown by our previous experiments 

 appeared to us, however, to negative the latter view. To 

 decide this point the prolonged series of experiments upon 

 lobsters detailed in the succeeding paper of the series were 

 set in progress. These experiments demonstrate that the 

 necessary energy is mainly derived from the proteins of 

 the animal's tissue just as in the later stages of inanition 

 of terrestrial animals, but in the case of aquatic animals 



