
REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR. 1h 
food of people of the poorer classes is also being made a 
subject of study with results that are likewise extremely inter- 
esting. 
Digestion Experiments.—A large number of experiments have 
been made in Europe, and of late in this country, to test the 
digestibility of various feeding stuffs by domestic animals. It 
is certainly as desirable to understand the digestibility of the 
food used by man as that of feeding stuffs used by domestic 
animals. Within a few years past a considerable number of 
digestion experiments with men, and some with children, have 
been made in European laboratories. In connection with the 
series of food investigations to which those carried on by the 
Storrs Station belong, such experiments have been undertaken 
in several institutions in this country. A considerable number 
have been carried out in connection with the Storrs Station 
during the past two years. 
Twelve such experiments made with healthy men, by the 
Station alone or in cooperation with the Department of Agri- 
culture, are described in the present Report. The method fol- 
lowed in these experiments is similar to that used in the tests 
of the digestibility of feeding stuffs by animals. It consists in 
weighing and analyzing both the food eaten and the undigested 
residue, and thus obtaining a measure of the proportions of the 
different nutritive ingredients of the food actually digested by 
the persons under experiment. 
Compilation of the Results of Analyses and of E-xperiments on 
Digestibility of Foods.—In the Report of this Station for 1891, 
tables were given showing the results of analyses of American 
food materials. ‘These included several hundred analyses of 
which the larger part had been made by the writer and his 
associates. Since that time the number of analyses has rapidly 
increased. A compilation lately made in behalf of the Office 
of Experiment Stations of the United States Department of 
Agriculture includes analyses of nearly 3,000 specimens of 
animal and vegetable food materials. This compilation is 
intended to include all of the analyses of such products that 
could be found up to July 1, 1896, exclusive of dairy products, 
sugars, and some other materials of which the number of 
analyses, especially for commercial purposes, is large, and the 
