4 6 



Scientific Proceedings (102). 



precise identity of the latter. In view of the fact that various 

 roots are known to contain carbohydrates, like inulin, which are 

 by no means identical in physiological value with starch although 

 they have various reactions in common with it, I have separated 

 the most abundant carbohydrate of the cat-tail root for identifi- 

 cation. 



It gives a blue color with iodine, forms a characteristic paste 

 with hot water, is readily digested (in contrast with inulin) by 

 saliva, and yields on hydrolysis a dextro-rotatory solution from 

 which an osazone, identical with glucosazone, was prepared. 

 The carbohydrate thus corresponds with starch. Our "flour" 

 indicated a carbohydrate content of 56.8 per cent., estimated in 

 the conventional way from the reducing sugar formed by hydrolysis 

 with acid. 



To test the innocuousness of the cat-tail root as a food mice 

 were fed for a week on otherwise adequate diets containing 30 

 per cent, of the "flour" without evident untoward results. The 

 animals gained in weight upon the ration. 



26 (i486) 



Do fruits contain water-soluble vitamine? 



By Thomas B. Osborne and Lafayette B. Mendel. 



[From the Laboratory of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment 

 Station, and the Sheffield Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry 

 in Yale University, New Haven, Conn.] 



Although fresh fruits have long been classed as valuable anti- 

 scorbutic foods there are comparatively few recorded scientifically 

 planned tests of their potency aside from the familiar studies of 

 the juice of oranges and lemons. With respect to the possible 

 presence, in fruit, of water-soluble vitamine (water-soluble B) 

 comparable to this essential factor in yeast, scarcely anything has 

 been published. We have begun experiments on rats in the 

 otherwise adequate diet of which fruits and fruit juices furnish the 

 the sole source of the water-soluble vitamine. When larger 

 portions (more than 5 grams per day) of fresh apples and pears 

 are fed the characteristic decline in weight observed where vita- 



