108 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
Composition of Cured Herrings. 
Some analyses of herrings cured commercially are given 
in the previous pages. Now all this work is very interesting, 
not only from the purely abstract side, but also from the aspect 
of national food resources. It is only just touched here. Ob- 
viously all the various trade and official categories of salted 
herrings must be studied, Winter and Summer “ fulls” and 
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“ spents,” “ matties,’’ &c., and the differences in composition 
are certain to be considerable. Thus, even in the three analyses 
made, water (in salted herring flesh) varies between about 38 
and 51, oil between 12 and 33, proteid between 15 and 24, and 
salt between 6 and 13—all in percentages of the wet, raw flesh, 
of course. Obviously it is nearly as difficult to say what is a 
‘“ salted or pickled herring” chemically as it is to describe 
similarly a fresh herring. 
The mean of the three analyses, is, however :— 
Pickled Herrings, composition of flesh. 
Water ... sits Ng He fad Hi 45-6 % 
«Oil ve Me es it cae wae 21:83% 
Proteid ... ee bhi wt ob Ne 20:9 % 
Ash (inclidiig-salt) 0.0002 ose, eek ee 9:5 % 
97-8 % 
(The deficiency to which allusion has already been made 
is here apparent.) 
Chemical Effect, of Salting Herrumags 
What effects follow from the drastic salting of fresh 
herrings are not fully investigated. There is probably little 
loss of oil but some loss of nitrogenous substance which becomes 
the greater the longer the herrings are kept in pickle. The 
latter is said to contain trimethylamine (to which it owes its 
