No. 524] SPIEGLER' S "WHITE MELANIN'' 499 



In other places, however, lie prefers to call the white 

 body an oxidized black pigment. In his paper no 

 comparison is made of the black and white wool prod- 

 ucts; here we have formula assigned bv Spiegler as 

 C 46 H 68 N 8 S0 20 and C 61 H 98 N 10 SO 20 , respectively. In this 

 case white could not be an oxidized black, neither does 

 the lower carbon percentage belong to the hlack. It is 

 incomprehensible to the author why Spiegler should 

 assert that "it is apparent that both arc identical in 

 nucleus/' The only point of identity which is apparent 

 is that the same elements enter into the composition of 

 each, but the proportions are so widely different that no 

 close relationship seems possible. Coupling this with 

 the facts that from black wool, treated in a manner very 

 closely resembling Spiegler \s method, the author has ob- 

 tained 1.84 per cent, of black melanin, while from white 

 wool only 0.06 per cent, of a grayish-brown 8 body was 

 obtained by an exactly similar method; and also that 

 albino hair (from white rabbits), obtained through the 

 courtesy of Dr. Castle of Harvard College, gave 0.03 per 

 cent, of a grayish-brown body; feathers from a recessive 

 (albino) fowl (silky) gave 6.155 per cent, of a similar 

 body and feathers from a dominant white fowl (white 

 Leghorn) gave 0.195 per cent., it appears that Spiegler 's 

 "white melanin" is not a substance belonging to the mel- 

 anin class, but is a product produced from the keratin by 

 the action of alkalies. The author has been able to find 

 no data as to the actual percentage of keratin in the hair 

 or feathers of the various animals, but it seems probable 

 that the coarser the covering of the animal, the greater 

 the percentage of keratin. Thus in the fowls we find 

 the coarse ribs of the feathers, which are composed 

 almost wholly of keratin, while in the white rabbit the 

 hair is very fine and silky and contains, supposedly, less 

 keratin than the intermediate wool of sheep, which is 

 more similar to the rabbit hair. The same holds true of 

 the decomposition product found if we assume it is due 



