i8 The: Coi^orado Expe:riment Station. 
§43. I have elsewhere noted the fact that in making dupli¬ 
cate determinations of this reducing power, it was difficult to obtain 
agreement in the results and that in some fodders, we had to repeat 
the treatment as many as three times to get even a fair agreement. 
I interpret this as indicating a radical difference in the character of 
the compounds in the different fodders which are attacked by tins 
reagent. 
methoxye group. 
§44. At the time this work was done no tests, so far as I 
knew, had been made to prove whether this group existed in ordi¬ 
nary plants. Recently, however, it has been shown that certain 
woods, not known to contain quinine or related alkaloids, yield 
methyl iodid on distillation with strong hydriodic acid showing the 
presence of compounds containing the methoxyl group. 
§45. The presence of aromatic compounds in the urine of 
herbivores and the fact of the general prevalence of alkaloidal com¬ 
pounds in plants, some of which contain the methoxyl group, sug¬ 
gested the probability of the presence of this group in the fodders, 
I accordingly attempted its determination, using the original Zeisel 
method. 
§46. I did not determine this group in the orts, for both the 
amount of the orts and the percentage of this group present being 
small, no great error is introduced by the omission, besides my chief 
object was to establish the presence or absence of the group in the 
case of each fodder and obtain, if possible, an idea of the amount 
of these compounds appropriated by the animal, an approximate 
coefficient of digestion. I did not hope to accomplish more than 
this. 
§47. The duplicate, and in some cases, triplicate determina¬ 
tions, agreed fairly well. The largest difference in twelve 
sets of duplicates, including also some triplicates, was less than one- 
half of one per cent. We checked our work using quinine, a com¬ 
mercial article, obtaining a fair agreement in our determination, 
but the results were a little lower than required by theory, which 
leads me to infer that my results are too low rather than too high. 
METHOXYL GROUP IN ALFALFA HAY FED AND FECES VOIDED. 
I II Av. 
Per cent. Per cent. Per cent. 
AlfaJlfa Hay . 1.18 1.23 1.21 
Dung, sheep fed alfalfa. 2.46 2.31 2.39 ' 
§48. The hay consumed was 12,364.8 grams containing 
148.38 grams of the methoxyl group; the feces weighed 4,630.5 
grams and contained 110.7 grams of rnethoxyl, giving us a diges¬ 
tion coefficient of 25.42 for this group. 
