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%Emethods which have been applied to the determination of the life-span of red cells have so far given altogether discordant results and the rationale of every one of them is of more or less questionable validity. Many bibliographies of the subject are available ; Schinrdt (1938) gives a useful collection of references which, though neither exhaustive nor up-to-date, exemplifies shortly the various techniques and numerical results. Our object in this paper is to present data on the course of destruction of erythrocytes after transfusion into normal subjects, as determined by the differential agglutination method of Ashby (1919). We shall show that from them, under certain assumptions, it is possible to calculate not merely the average life of the cells as they occur naturally, but also their chance of survival for any length of time.

This paper describes, (1) a unique succession of antibodies produced by a recipient of multiple transfusions of blood, and (2) the frequency and manner of inheritance of the red blood cell antigens disclosed by these antibodies. A brief description of this case has already been published (Callender, Race & Paykop, 1945).

Iron absorption from eggs labelled biologically with 59Fe has been studied in 27 subjects by the use of a whole-body counter. Eggs were given in a standard meal on three successive days. Absorption was compared with that obtained from the same meal with the addition of roo ml of orange juice, and with absorption of iron from three daily doses of I mg of ferrous iron or a single dose of 5 mg of ferrous iron. Mean absorption from the eggs alone was 3.7% which was about a