Rabbit Food for Owl Eyes

The R.A.F. may soon be eating Arizona carrots in preference to all other carrots on earth. The British Ministry of Foods last week impatiently cabled to University of Arizona Nutrition Chemist Margaret Cammack Smith for more details on her discovery that "Arizona carrots contain three to ten times as much carotene as the average carrot*--a discovery, said the Ministry, "of extreme interest and value."

Reason: carotene, a yellow pigment occurring in association with chlorophyll in green plants, is transformed by the body (probably the liver) into vitamin A, which insures sharp human vision at night.

Unlike some vitamins, vitamin A cannot be easily synthesized; and fish livers, from which the vitamin is extracted, have been scarce since war broke out in 1939. So Arizona's three to four thousand acres of carrots (whose harvesting began last fortnight) may be the answer to every aviation command's problem of preventing night blindness in its flyers, who tend to subsist largely on peanuts and candy.

* Chemist Smith is now trying to find whether Arizona's winter growing season, soil or sunshine is responsible.

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