106 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
THE DIETETIC VALUE OF SPRATS AND OTHER 
CLUPEOID FISHES. 
By Jas. Jounstong, D.Sc. 
Introduction. 
The following observations are published by permission 
of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. They relate to 
some investigations made for the Board which were begun 
early in 1918 as part of some war emergency proposals. 
Various lines of enquiry into methods of fish preservation and 
into the rationale of the commercial processes were marked 
out, but nothing need be said here about these. In the course 
of these enquiries, however, a number of analyses of fresh 
and preserved Clupeoid fishes were made and these results 
have general interest and may usefully be put on record. It 
became apparent, while these analyses were being made, 
(1) that there is a great lack of knowledge regarding the seasonal 
variation in composition of the flesh of many kinds of fish ; 
(2) that next to nothing is known with regard to the chemical 
changes undergone by the flesh of fish cured, salted, smoked, 
hermetically preserved or generally conserved in the various 
ways at present practised; and (3) that even the routine 
methods of analyses of the tissues of fishes are imperfectly 
developed. The observations made here have reference mainly 
to these latter points. 
. Material Examined. 
Ly Se pme ts. 
Attention was first directed to the sprat which is one of | 
the most abundant and least valuable (from the commercial 
point of view) of British fishes. Obviously, it was of particular 
importance, as events appeared to be shaping themselves in 
January of 1918, to develop this source of food to the highest 
