_Observation._ In the feeding of infants, as well as in supplying food to older children, the preceding suggestions should always be regarded. The person who has been confined by an exhausting sickness, should most scrupulously regard this rule, if he wishes to regain his strength and flesh with rapidity. As the rapidity of the digestive process is less in students and individuals who are engaged in sedentary employments, than in stirring agriculturists, the former class are more liable to take food too frequently than the latter, while its observance is of greater importance to the sedentary artisan than to the lively lad and active farmer. 307. _Food should be well masticated._ All solid aliments should be reduced to a state of comparative fineness, by the teeth, before it is swallowed; the gastric fluid of the stomach will then blend with it more readily, and act more vigorously in reducing it to chyme. The practice of swallowing solid food, slightly masticated, or "bolting" it down, tends to derange the digestive process and impair the nutrition of the system. 308. _Mastication should be moderate, not rapid._ In masticating food, the salivary glands are excited to action, and some time must elapse before they can, secrete saliva in sufficient quantities to moisten it. If the aliment is not supplied with saliva, digestion is retarded; besides, in rapid eating, more food is generally consumed than the system demands, or can be easily digested. Laborers, as well as men of leisure, should have ample time for taking their meals. Imperfect mastication is a prevailing cause of indigestion. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= What persons would be benefited by observing the preceding remarks? 307. Why should food be well masticated? What is the effect of "bolting down" food? 308. How should mastication be performed? Why? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 309. _Food should be masticated and swallowed without drink._ As the salivary glands supply fluid to moisten the dry food, the use of tea, coffee, water, or any other fluid, is not demanded by nature's laws while taking a meal. One objection to "washing down" the food with drink is, the aliment is moistened, not with the saliva, but with the drink. This tends to induce disease, not only in the salivary organs, by leaving them in a state of comparative inactivity, but in the stomach, by the deficiency of the salivary stimulus. Another is, large quantities of fluids, used as drinks, give undue distention to the stomach, and lessen the energy of the gastric juice by its dilution, thus retarding digestion. Again, drinks taken into the stomach must be removed by absorption before the digestion of other articles is commenced.