The attitude which one should take toward the discussion of the relative merits of bolted as against whole wheat flour is now easy to understand and appreciate. The latter is decidedly more suitably constituted to maintain well-being for a short time if it serves as the sole article of diet, as it might under conditions approaching famine. Whole wheat flour is, however, a decidedly incomplete food, and needs to be supplemented with other foods in order to compensate for its deficiencies. The unfortunate individual who through faulty-habits of living, finds at an age at which he should be still in possession of the full vigor of middle life, that his efficiency is diminishing and the joy of living slipping away, has not infrequently turned for relief, to substituting whole wheat flour for the staple white variety. As a rule those who advocate this practice exhibit in some degree the spectral mien of the dyspeptic. They would gain much more through adhering to a diet well balanced than through clutching to this or any other dietary whim or fad.

Wheat bran has been studied by Osborne and Mendel (5). Their results indicate that the proteins of this part of the kernel have a higher value than those of the germ, and that they are distinctly superior to those of bolted flour. Their findings were not concordant, since but one rat in four succeeded in growing on their experimental diet. Bran is much poorer in water-soluble B than is the germ. They found 5 per cent of bran as the sole source of this factor to be entirely inadequate. McCollum, Sim-monds and Pitz, have observed normal growth in young rats during five months with diets in which this substance was entirely derived from 2 per cent of germ, and Osborne and Mendel have also found 5 per cent of the latter to furnish sufficient water-soluble B (2).

No studies by means of biological methods have been made of the adequacy of the mineral content of bran, but one may judge fairly safely from the results of chemical analysis that it is too poor in calcium and probably also in sodium and chlorin. It contains but little of the factor, fat-soluble A. This statement is not made upon the results of a direct test, but on inference from the well-known fact that the entire wheat kernel is, like most seeds, well below the optimum in its content of this substance, for the amount contained in the kernel is in great measure located in the germ. Bran constitutes about 15 per cent of the entire kernel, and could not be expected to contain much of it.