Can Fasting Fowls Synthesize Glycocoll? 



127 



At this stage we started feeding benzoic acid and gave each 

 of the three hens one gram of benzoic acid per day for five days, 

 during which time the hens received no food but plenty of water. 

 The evaporated urines were united, acidified with phosphoric 

 acid and extracted with alcohol in a rotatory extracting appara- 

 tus. This alcoholic extract was then evaporated to dryness by 

 means of an electric fan and shaken several times with large 

 quantities of ether. The ether extract was allowed to stand in 

 the ice-box for nearly a month, then as no benzoyl-ornithine 

 crystallized out. the ether was distilled off and the brown residue 

 dissolved in hot water. On cooling, crystals appeared in the 

 water solution which resembled those of benzoic acid. The 

 crystals were removed by suction and recrystallized from hot 

 water. 



On drying the crystals melted at 120-121°. proving the sub- 

 stance to be unchanged benzoic acid. The amount of benzoic 

 acid thus recovered amounted to 9.5 grams or 63.3 per cent, of 

 the amount fed. The residue from the original alcoholic solu- 

 tion was again extracted but this time with a mixture of seven 

 parts other and three parts alcohol at 30°. This extract was 

 placed in a stoppered flask and kept at 0° and each day sufficient 

 ether added to cut down the percentage of alcohol one per cent. 

 When the percentage of alcohol had been reduced to three per 

 cent, there appeared a granular white precipitate on the bottom 

 of the flask. This substance was redissolved in alcohol and pre- 

 cipitated by the addition of ether, dried at 80° in vacuo and 

 found to melt at 180-184°, but the total yield of the pure sub- 

 stance was slightly more than 0.1 grams. Nitrogen determina- 

 tion by Kjeldahl showed 8.06 per cent, instead of the calculated 

 8.23 per cent. 



"Well fed" hens were also fed 15 grams of benzoic acid, that 

 is, three different hens were given one gram of benzoic acid per 

 day for each of five days. The urines were treated in exactly 

 the same manner as described above. 



As a result of this feeding we isolated 3.1 grams of benzoyl- 

 ornithine from the urine of the hens and 8.3 grams of uncom- 

 bined benzoic acid. Inasmuch as we found no trace of a 

 glycocoll compound it seemed that perhaps hippuric acid had 

 been excreted but had escaped detection. For this reason a hen 

 was fed one gram hippuric acid per day for a period of three 



