
STANDARDS FOR RATIONS AND DIETARIES, 221 
formers and fuel value. This I have attempted to do in other 
places.* It is done also in the pages of the present Report. 
With regard to this whole matter there are two things to be 
especially remembered: 
The first is that our tables of composition of foods and feeding 
stuffs and our formulas for rations and dietaries are only general 
indications. They are not maps, but guide posts. They are not 
recipes, but simply attempts to epitomize general principles. To 
use them rightly the principles must be understood, and in their 
application they must be fitted to the demands of individual cases. 
The other is the need of research. A vast deal of time and 
thought and labor and money has been used, in this country and 
Europe, during the past fifty and especially the past thirty years, 
in attempting to learn the laws of nutrition of animals and man. 
The results of all this work are magnificent, and yet they are 
only preliminary. The time has come when three things are 
needed. These are: First, the collating of the results of inquiry 
and making them available to experimenters, teachers, students, 
writers, and the intelligent public; second, the systematizing of 
our so-called practical experimenting so that the work may be 
made co6éperative, the results comparable, and the product more 
valuable; third, the developing of abstract inquiry. 
This last, the abstract research, is the most difficult thing of all 
to accomplish. On that account, perhaps, it is the thing toward 
which we should strive most earnestly. What is wanted is the 
study of the application of the laws of the conservation of matter 
and the conservation of energy to the living organism, in order 
to discover more exactly the laws of nutrition; and the study of 
the chemistry and physiology of the materials used for foods and 
feeding stuffs, in order to learn more accurately their nutritive 
values. 
To the former of these problems the Storrs Station is address- 
ing a not inconsiderable part of its attention. Fortunately the 
United States Department of Agriculture is promoting the same 
inquiry. The respiration and bomb calorimeters, to which refer- 
ence has been made on another page of the present Report, 
represent efforts in this direction. 

* See Report of the Storrs Experiment Station for 1891, pp. 160 and 161, and Bulletin No. 
at of the U.S. Department of Agriculture on ‘‘ Methods and Results of Investigations on 
the Chemistry and Economy of Food,’’ pp. 200-213. . 
