Three years ago boards of military officers, on which the medical department was represented, considered and reported on the subject of an emergency ration to be carried by troops on occasions of special service which separated them from the immediate care of the subsistence department. The ration adopted Dec. 5, 1896, by authority of the Secretary of War, consisted of specified quantities of the articles always kept on hand at the subsistence depots: hard bread, bacon, pea-meal, coffee or tea, salt, pepper and tobacco. In May of the following year a practical test of the efficiency of this ration was made by Deputy Surgeon-General Smart who, with forty-six cavalrymen, undertook an expeditionary march of ten days' duration in Oklahoma, each member of the command carrying and cooking his own rations and having no addition to them from any source. Each day's allowance of the staples consisted of 8 ounces of