mins to vary, the foreign nutritive matters being able
to bring about, under certain circumstances, and in cases of
superabundant ingestions, a real albuminous "saving" in the newest
sense of the word.

Besides, a prejudicial question makes the debate almost vain. When it
was admitted by such physiologists as Voit, Rubner and their school
that from 140 to 150 grammes of albumin in the minimum were daily
necessaries in the human diet, a variation of a few units in the
digestive power presented some importance. Nowadays the real utility
of albumins is differently appreciated. The need of them seems to have
been singularly exaggerated; first lowered to about 75 gr. by A.
Gautier, it has dropped successively with Lapicque, Chittenden,
Landergreen, Morchoisne and Labbe, by virtue of considerations both
ethnological and physiological, to 50 grs., 30 grs. and even to 25 or
20 grammes. The "nutritive relation"--that is to say, the yield from
albuminoid matters to the total nutritive matters of diet--is thus
brought down from 1/3 its primitive value to 1/15 or 1/20 at most. It
follows that the slight inferiority found in the digestive powers of
vegetable albumin appears unimportant. It is sufficient to add 2 or 3
more grammes of albumin to a ration already superabundant of from 40
to 50 grammes of vegetable proteins to bring back a complete
equilibrium in the use of vegetable and animal varieties. The
theoretical inferiority of vegetable albumin thus almost completely
disappears.

H. LABBE.

(_To be continued._)

* * * * *

If your system has become clogged, go slow--and fast.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.

O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill
Wild Spirit which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying