Igo STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
In the present experiments it was not convenient to collect 
the urine and make determinations of the heat of combustion 
of the organic matter, consequently the amount of energy lost 
to the body because of incomplete oxidation of the protein was 
computed by multiplying the amount of available protein by 
the factor 1.25. Deducting this quantity of energy from the 
energy of the material absorbed from the alimentary canal gives 
the quantity of energy utilized by the body, which is here con- 
sidered as the available energy; and dividing this by the total 
energy of the food, and multiplying by 100, gives the percent- 
age of total energy available, or the coefficient of availability 
of the energy. 
The computation of the available energy of the total diet in 
experiment No. 558 would therefore be as follows: The total 
energy of the food, 11,464 calories, less the energy of the feces, 
787 calories, gives the energy of the food absorbed from the 
alimentary canal, 10,677 calories. The quantity of available 
protein of the total food, 223.7 grams, multiplied by the factor 
1.25, gives the energy of the material in the urine, 280 calories. 
The energy of the material absorbed, 10,677 calories, less the 
energy lost in the urine, 280 calories, gives the energy actually 
available to the body, 10,397 calories, and this result divided by 
the quantity of energy in the total food, 11,464 calories, and 
multiplied by 100, gives 90.69 per cent. as the coefficient of 
availability of the energy of the total food. 
Availability of cereal portion of the diet.— As previously 
stated, the diet of the experiments was made very simple in 
order that the availability of the cereal portion alone might be 
computed. For this purpose, all the other materials except the 
cereal (1. e. milk, cream and sugar) were those of which the avail- 
ability of the nutrients was quite well known from the results of 
previous experiments, and it was assumed that the averages of 
such results would represent the availability of the nutrients 
of such materials in the present experiments. By use of these 
factors it is possible to compute how much of the feces should 
pertain to the part of the diet that was not cereal, and the rest 
may be ascribed to the breakfast food. From these results, and 
the amounts of nutrients-in the breakfast food eaten, the avail- 
ability of the nutrients of the cereal alone may be estimated in 
the same way as explained above for total diet. 




