708 
Journal of Agricultural Research 
Vol. V, No. is 
maintenance, growth, and reproduction. It is true that only one litter 
of kittens was bom, but this would have been practically impossible had 
an attempt been made to maintain the parents of these kittens for two- 
thirds of a year on a diet lacking something essential. Cat 2 went 
through the period of gestation and nursing with every outward indica¬ 
tion of excellent health. 1 
SUMMARY 
(1) During the study of the chemical composition of mature beef and 
of immature veal, no differences between them that are physiologically 
significant were detected. 
(2) In a large number of artificial-digestion experiments immature veal 
digested as fast as mature beef. The speed of digestion was measured 
by three different methods. 
(3) Cats were fed on a diet in which immature veal was the sole source 
of nitrogen. The young animals grew normally on the diet; the older 
ones became fat. A pair of cats, after living two-thirds of a year on the 
diet, produced a litter of healthy young kittens which, after the nursing 
period, continued on the immature-veal diet with excellent growth. 
(4) The work indicates that immature veal, when properly prepared, 
is fit for human food, especially when its deficiencies in fat and possibly 
in small amounts of undetermined constituents are counterbalanced in 
the ordinary mixed diet. 
LITERATURE CITED 
Atwater, W. O. 
1895. Methods and results of investigations on the chemistry and economy of food. 
U. S. Dept. Agr., Office Exp. Sta. Bui. 21, 222 p., 15 fig. 
Bauer, J. 
1885. On the dietary of the sick, and dietetic methods of treatment. In Hand¬ 
book of General Therapeutics. Edited by H. von Ziemssen. Translated 
from the German by E. F. Willoughby, v. 1. London. 
Benedict, F. G., and Manning, Charlotte R. 
1905. The determination of water in foods and physiological preparations. In 
Amer. Jour. Physiol., v. 13, no. 3, p. 305-329. 
1 The argument has been offered that the metabolism of the fetus and of the newly bom is different 
from that of older animals and that there is a possibility of toxic substances being present in embryonal 
or young tissues, which substances, though present in amounts too small to be detected by analytic meth¬ 
ods, may be very powerful in their action upon the consumer of very young meat; or, as is sometimes 
alleged, the newly bom animal does not excrete its metabolic end produets fast enough, with the result 
that its tissues are loaded with waste material. 
The polypeptid nitrogen which passes unused through the assimilatory system of the fetus or of the newly 
bom is, however, not significant. If by any chance the tissues of a Very young calf happened to retain 
some of its own metabolic products because of retarded excretion or from any other cause whatsoever, 
so long as the animal was normal otherwise there would be practically no danger to the consumer of such 
nieht from poisonous end products of protein breakdown. RoWever, the tissues of very young halves 
are not loaded with unexcreted nitrOgCn. The data obtained on this point are direct and conclusive. 
(Seep. 673.) 
