152 
RESEARCHES IN ANIMAL CHEMISTRY. 
nine is much more soluble in water and in alcohol than 
creatine. Its solution in water has a caustic taste like am- 
mania. It changes to blue the red litmus paper; it combines 
with all the acids and forms salts of great beauty ; its salt of 
platina is remarkable for the largeness of its crystals and 
their beautiful yellow golden colour. The formula just 
mentioned expresses the quantity which combines with one 
equiv. of acid. The crystals of creatinine belongs to the 
monoclinometric system — they are voluminous, colourless, 
and very shining. 
Creatine contains the elements of glycocolle (sugar of 
anhydrous gelatine) with one atom more of ammonia ; the 
creatinine, those of caffeine, with one atom more of amide. 
I will add, that forty lean fowls have furnished me with 
about 24 grammes of creatine ; 56 pounds of beef 16 
grammes ; and 100 pounds of horse-flesh 36 grammes. 
The extracts of all the meats on which I have operated? 
evaporated to dryness and calcined to redness, leave a white 
ash containing only phosphates. The liquids furnished by 
the flesh of beef and of the horse leave a mixure of phos- 
phate of alkalies (of potash and of soda,) precipitating the 
salts of silver yellow, and the pyrophosphate of soda and of 
potash precipitate them white. The flesh of fowl leaves 
pure pyrophosphates. 
The relation of the salts of potash and of soda in the 
liquids of flesh and in the blood are very different. For 1 
equiv. of potash the blood of the ox contains 10 or 12 equivs- 
of soda ; this relation is inverted in the watery extract of 
the flesh of the same animal. The blood of the horse con- 
tains for 1 equjv. of potash 3.62 equivs. of soda; for the 
same quantity of soda, the flesh of the same horse contains 
6.9 equivs. of potash. These relations will conduct to some 
important conclusions, if we remember that in milk they 
are the salts of potash which predominate. If a salt of soda 
(a phosphate of sodaj is really and indispensably necessary 
for the constitution of the blood of many animals, it will 
