o us necessary
for repelling such an interpretation of facts. Modern works have
shown us that the greater proportion of ingested albumin played, in
fact, a calorific, and not a plastic, part. Under these conditions one
is justified in doubting whether there takes place with regard to the
total albumins ingested a work of reconstruction thus complicated in
the organism, after their first deterioration. Evidently one may come
to believe that this complicated labour applies only to the more or
less feeble portion of albumin really integrated.

Practically speaking, the best criterion for judging the utilisation
of an ingested albumin lies in the persistence of the corporal weight,
allied to the ascertained fact of a stable equilibrium in the total
azotized balance-sheet which is provided by the comparison of the
"Ingesta" with the "Excreta." From this point of view there exists the
closest similitude between the albumins of animal and those of
vegetable origin; both, in fact, are capable of assuring good health
and corporal and cellular equilibrium.

However, the digestibility of vegetable albumins seems to remain
slightly inferior to that of animal albumins. 97 per cent. of the
animal fibrine given in a meal are digested, where 88 to 90 per cent.
only of vegetable albumins are absorbed and utilised. It is a small
difference, but not one to be overlooked. We must say, however, that
the method one employs in determining these digestibilities takes from
them a part of their value, and renders difficult the comparison of
results obtained. Sensibly pure albumins are too often compared in an
artificial diet. One deviates thus from the conditions of practical
physiology. In fact, in ordinary meals, all varieties of foods are
mixed together, acting and reacting upon each other, reciprocally
modifying their digestibility. If one conforms to this way of acting
towards alimentary albumins, the results change sensibly. In the
presence of an excess of starch, under the shape of bread, for
example, vegetable albumin seems to be absorbed in about the same
proportions as animal albumin.

If, in a flesh diet, animal albumins are always consumed nearly pure
(lean meat containing hardly anything but albumin, besides a little
fat, and an inferior quantity of glycogen) vegetable albumin is
always, on the contrary, mixed with a number of other substances. This
is doubtless one of the reasons which causes the digestibility of
vegetable albu