_Conclusion: The Energetic Character of Food._—To sum up we have confined ourselves, in what has been said, to the consideration of a single character of food, and really the most essential, its energetic character. Food must furnish energy to the organism, and for that purpose it is decomposed and broken up within it, and issues from it simplified. It is thus, for instance, that the fats, which from the chemical point of view are complicated molecular edifices, escape in the form of carbonic acid and water. And so it is with carbo-hydrates, starchy and sugary substances. This is because these compounds descend to a lower degree of complexity during their passage through the organism, and by this drop, as it were, they get rid of the chemical energy which they contained in the potential state. Thermo-chemistry enables us to deduce from the comparison of the initial and final states the value of the energy absorbed by the living being. This energetic, dynamogenic or thermogenic value, thus gives a measure of the alimentary capacity of the substance. A gramme of fat, for instance, gives to the organism a quantity of energy equivalent to 9.4 Calories; the thermogenic value of the albumenoids is 4.8 Calories. The thermogenic or thermal value of carbohydrates is less than 4.7 calories. This being so, we understand why the animal is nourished by foods which are products very high in the scale of chemical complexity. § 4. FOOD CONSIDERED EXCLUSIVELYY AS SOURCE OF HEAT. We have seen that food is, in the first place, a source of _chemical energy_; and, in the second place, a source of _vital energy_—finally, and consequently, a source of thermal energy. It is this last point of view which has exclusively struck the attention of certain physiologists, and hence has arisen a peculiar manner of conceiving the rôle of food. It consists in looking on food as a source of thermal energy. This conception is easily applied to warm-blooded animals, but to them exclusively—and this is where it first fails. The animal is warmer than the environment in general. It is constantly giving out heat to it. To repair this loss of heat it takes in food in exact proportion to the loss it sustains. When it is a question of cold-blooded vertebrates, which live in water and in most cases have an internal temperature which is not distinguishable from that of the environment, we see less clearly the thermal rôle of food. It seems then that the production of heat is an episodic phenomenon, not existing for itself.