86 STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
were also the services of the University mechanician, Mr. 
O. S. Blakeslee, and the use of the mechanical laboratory, 
which is especially fitted for the construction of scientific 
apparatus. With these facilities and a portion of the funds 
of the Experiment Station the work progressed so far that 
the success of the enterprise seemed reasonably assured. 
The need of much larger sums for the experimental work, 
however, became more and more pressing. Here again the 
research met with good fortune. In the year 1894 a pro- 
vision was made by act of Congress for an inquiry into the 
food and nutrition of the people of the United States. The 
responsibility for the inquiry is vested in the Secretary of 
Agriculture, by whom it was assigned to the Office of Experi- 
ment Stations of the Department of Agriculture, and the 
immediate charge was placed in the hands of the Director of 
the Storrs Experiment Station as Special Agent of the Depart- 
ment. It was considered that a research not only germane, 
but fundamental to such an inquiry, might be appropriately 
aided from this fund, though the amount which could be 
utilized for the purpose was small. In 1895 the Legislature of 
Connecticut provided a special annual appropriation to be ex- 
pended by the Storrs Experiment Station for food inquiries. 
The resources of the Station for this purpose were thus 
increased, and with the supplement from the General Govern- 
ment and the private aid referred to, it has been possible to 
greatly enlarge the scope of the inquiry and to prosecute the 
work in a manner which would otherwise have been entirely 
out of the question. Indeed this may be regarded as one of 
that class of cases in which the higher scientific research has 
been favored by a happy combination of private and public 
support in such a way as not only to insure the greatest 
economy in the use of money and other resources, but also to 
promise a valuable outcome. 
The inquiry has thus assumed such form that it naturally 
divides itself in two parts. These have to do respectively with 
the metabolism of matter, and the metabolism and conservation 
of energy. 
The purpose of the present article is to give a brief prelimi- 
nary account of so much of the work thus far done as bears 
directly upon the metabolism of matter. The results obtained 


