1 34 Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine. 



lymph. The thoracic lymph was in one case of the same, in the 

 other case, of a higher osmotic pressure than the serum. It is 

 therefore probable that the osmotic pressure of the thoracic lymph 

 is usually greater than that of the neck lymph. 



8. Under the conditions of our experiments — ether or chloro- 

 form anesthesia for from two to four hours — the osmotic pressure 

 of the serum at the end of the experiment was in many cases 

 greater than at the beginning of the experiment. The same dif- 

 ference is sometimes exhibited by the lymph collected from the 

 same lymphatic but at different periods of the experiment. The 

 mechanism of this change is being investigated. 



94 (237) 



On the dissociation in solutions of the neutral casemates of 

 sodium and ammonium. 



By T. BRAILSFORD ROBERTSON. 



[From the Rudolph Spreckels Physiological Laboratory of the Uni- 

 versity of California.^ 



From the dilution law T , or from the equations for the equilib- 

 rium of an amphoteric electrolyte in the presence of non-ampho- 

 teric electrolytes, it can be shown that in the case of a protein 

 in which the acid function considerably exceeds the basic function 

 (as, for example, in the case of casein), an equation can be obtained 

 connecting the observed conductivity of a neutral solution of the 

 protein compound of a base with the dilution of the solution. 

 This equation involves two constants, the one being the dissocia- 

 ation-constant of the protein salt of the base and the other the 

 sum of the specific velocities of the anions and cations present. 



If a solution of a hydroxide of an alkali or alkaline earth or 

 ammonia be shaken up with casein until no more casein goes into 

 solution, the solution (as I have previously shown) is, after filtra- 

 tion, neutral in reaction and is a solution of the neutral caseinate 

 of the base, containing an amount of the base equivalent to 2.4 

 per cent. CaO. 



Since these solutions are neutral, if no complex ions are 

 formed, the conductivity will be entirely due to the cations of the 

 base employed and to the casein anions. The sum of the ionic 



