2 BULLETIN 17, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
fruit in the boxes. The temperature of the car followed the atmos- 
pheric fluctuations to a slight degree, while the fruit was frequently 
unaffected by a car temperature that rose or fell 5 degrees, provided 
the increased or decreased temperature was not continuous. The 
present investigation, which includes corresponding data for products 
requiring lower temperatures than do citrus fruits, confirms and 
amplifies this information. Powell fixed the fundamentals of the 
transportation of refrigerated citrus fruits, which do not require a 
temperature of less than 40° F., and if well handled survive at higher 
temperatures. He also demonstrated that while the use of low 
temperatures during transit might enable mechanically injured fruit 
to reach the market hi a salable condition, such fruit would not 
stand the vicissitudes of marketing and would ultimately redound 
to the disadvantage of the industries involved, as do all poor products 
that reach the consumer. In this conclusion, also, the writers of the 
present bulletin concur, and would lay even more emphasis than 
does Powell on the bad results seen during the marketing of poultry 
transported at fluctuating 'or excessively high temperatures. 
Decay in oranges, as well as in almost all other fruits, is definite, 
and can be gauged with accuracy by inspection; not so with meats, 
fish, dressed poultry, or eggs. Deterioration, the gradations of 
which in these products are almost infinite, is so obscure that a 
description of the appearance alone does not afford an accurate 
method of fixing the point to which it has progressed. If an exact 
statement of condition is desired, the laboratory must be depended 
upon for the composition, since it is the variation between the com- 
position at the time of killing and at the time of observation that 
measures the changes occurring in the interim. In the course of 
certain investigations conducted in the Food Research Laboratory 
it has been found necessary to determine by chemical analysis the 
effect of temperature upon the speed of decomposition of dressed 
poultry. A summary of a large number of analyses of chicken flesh 
from dressed birds kept at varying temperatures 1 showed in a strik- 
ing fashion the relative rate of decomposition when all the factors 
except the temperature were constant. The analyses include a 
study of the distribution of protein and nonprotein nitrogen, the 
latter increasing at the expense of the former as decomposition pro- 
ceeds. 
Since the amount of nonprotein nitrogenous material is especially 
indicative of deteriorative changes, an estimation of its quantity in a 
flesh of known normal composition gives a ready means of measuring 
the change that has occurred. A method 2 sufficiently rapid and accu- 
1 Hearings before the Committee on Manufactures, United States Senate, Sixty-second Congress, May, 
1911. 
* An Application of the Folin Method to the Determination of Ammoniacal Nitrogen in Moat . J . A mor 
Chem. Soc, 1910, St: 561. 
