Biogenetics and Growth with Special Reference to the Efficiency Complex in Domestic Animals

This volume of over one thousand pages, as stated in the foreword, “pre-sents an integration of the results of the researches sponsored by the Herman Frash Foundation for Research in Agricultural Chemistry at the Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station.” The author served as leader of the research project, and is known to; students in the field for his numerous scientific reports presented over a period of years in the form of individual papers published in various scientific journals. The book will undoubtedly be welcomed because it gives the reader the broad perspective that he cannot get from the reading of short scientific articles. Twenty-five chapters are required to present the available material. As might be expected from the title itself, the approach is chiefly through consideration of the energy factor in nutrition. Even so, the treatment has been made very broad. One chapter is entitled “metabolic catalysts in the efficiency complex: enzymes, minerals and vitamins in biologic oxidations,” and devotes forty pages to this subject. The discussion of some of the topics in this cha4pter, although quite brief, is probably adequate when one considers the objective of the volume as a whole. On the one hand, the discussion of the main theme would be quite inadequate if the material in this chapter were omitted; on the other hand, an extensive monographic presentation of each of the topics in this chapter would be quite unnecessary. The amount of material actually included is really quite considerable; a liberal use of small type has made this possible. These same comments might also be made regarding the 65-page chapter that deals with the hormones. The variety of topics discussed in this volume is rather astonishing. There is an excellent discussion of the relative values of the “ad libitum” and “paired-feeding” methods for the nutritional evaluation of foods, a topic which still arouses controversy in many circles. Can we rely on our “instinct” to tell us what foods to choose in order to secure an adequate diet? This is treated under the heading of “Nutritional Wisdom.” How old is the rat that might be regarded as “equivalent in growth” to a sixteen-month-old cow? See table 19.3 on page 736, which is part of chapter 19 entitled “physiologic time and equivalence of age.”