The properties of fibrin, so far as cookery is concerned, place it between albumen and gelatin; it is coagulable like albumen, and soluble like gelatin, but in a minor degree. Like gelatin, it is tasteless and non-nutritious _alone_. This has been proved by feeding animals on lean meat, which has been cut up and subjected to the action of cold water, which dissolves out the albumen and other juices of the flesh, and leaves only the muscular fibre and its envelopes. The experiment has been made in laboratories, and also on a larger scale in Australia, where the lean beef from which the ‘Extract of Meat’ had been taken out by cold water was given to dogs, pigs, and other animals; but, after taking a few mouthfuls, they all rejected it, and suffered starvation when it was forced upon them without other food. The same is the case with the spontaneously coagulated fibrin of the blood; it is, when washed, a yellowish opaque fibrous mass, without smell or taste, insoluble in cold water, alcohol, or ether, but imperfectly soluble if digested for a considerable time in hot water. The following is the chemical composition of these three constituents of lean meat, according to Mulder: +-----------+---------+----------+--------+ | -- | Albumen | Gelatine | Fibrin | +-----------+---------+----------+--------+ |Carbon | 53·5 | 50·40 | 52·7 | |Hydrogen | 7·0 | 6·64 | 6·9 | |Nitrogen | 15·5 | 18·34 | 15·4 | |Oxygen | 22·0 | 24·62 | 23·5 | |Sulphur | 1·6 | -- | 1·2 | |Phosphorus | 0·4 | -- | 0·3 | | +---------+----------+--------+ | | 100·0 | 100·00 | 100·0 | +-----------+---------+----------+--------+