8o 
The Colorado Experiment Station. 
alcoholic extract contains pentosans which may yield reducing 
sugars on heating with dilute acids, or inversion, so there is doubt 
whether sucrose, ordinary cane sugar, in a fodder can be determined 
in this way, especially when present in small quantities. The same 
is true of the starch determinations, because we found that boil¬ 
ing for one hour and treating with malt extract removed furfurol 
as in the preceding instance. This shows that the pentosans are 
dissolved by a considerable range of solvents. Further, we find 
them present in all of the extracts except possibly that obtained by 
the treatment with chlorin and subsequent washing with sodic hy¬ 
drate and sulfurous acid to remove the products of chloridization. 
Some furfurol is removed from the'crude fibre by this treatment 
but we did not find any reducing sugar in the extract obtained; it is, 
of course, possible that the action of the chlorin was so drastic that 
it oxidized and radically changed the furfurol yielding substances 
so that there remained no hydrolizable carbohydrates of this type 
in the extract. The residue left, after all these treatments, the 
cellulose yields from i.6 to 2.1 per cent, furfurol, showing that 
substances yielding from one-sixth to one-third of the total furfurol 
yielded by the fodder, resist all of these treatments and constitute 
a portion of the cellulose thus obtained. This is probably oxycel- 
lulose which may be the source of the furfurol removed by the 
treatment with chlorin and the subsequent washings. 
§189. Again, we find that the nitrogen content of the fodder 
is distributed unevenly throughout the extracts, some of it, a very 
little, escaping all of the solvents and remaining in the cellulose. 
The compounds corresponding to the amid-nitrogen are quite easily 
soluble and might readily pass into the 80 per cent, alcohol solution 
but we find in the case of the alfalfa, for instance, that one-third of 
the nitrogen, calculated as proteids, is soluble in this menstruum, 
whereas, the amid-nitrogen, provided it were wholly soluble in 80 
per cent, alcohol, could not constitute more’ than one-fifth of the 
total, showing that large amounts of nitrogenous substances other 
than amids went into solution. These statements will suffice to 
make clear the meaning of the assertion that this procedure does 
not effect the division of the fodder into well defined groups, and 
it was not expected that it would, but rather that it might enable 
us to find differences between the fodders which would at least 
help to explain the differences observed in their feeding values. 
§190. It is and has been known, for the past twenty-four 
hundred years, that alfalfa hay is a good fodder, so there is nothing 
new in such a statement. The new thing is the general recognition 
of the fact and the interest taken in it. I have acknowledged this 
very generally accepted estimate of the value of this fodder in 
choosing it as the standard of comparison in this work. It may 
