The desirability of mechanically acting upon soft food is not so apparent as the necessity for the bruising of oats is. Roots are so easily masticable that if they are rendered more so there is danger of their being so hastily swallowed as to escape thorough insalivation, which is so necessary to ensure perfect digestion. To guard against this danger, perhaps the best way would be to give pulped mangels and turnips mixed with cut straw; a mixture which could not easily be bolted. Mr. Charles Lawrence, of Cirencester, who is a great advocate for the cooking of food, and has frequently published his experience of the benefits derivable therefrom, thus describes his method of combining pulped roots with dry fodder:-- We find that, taking a score of bullocks together fattening, they consume per head per diem three bushels of chaff, mixed with just half a cwt. of pulped roots, exclusive of cakes of corn; that is to say, rather more than two bushels of chaff are mixed with the roots, and given at two feeds, morning and evening, and the remainder is given with the cake, &c., at the middle-day feed, thus:--We use the steaming apparatus of Stanley, of Peterborough, consisting of a boiler in the centre, in which the steam is generated, and which is connected by a pipe on the left hand with a large galvanised iron receptacle for steaming food for pigs, and on the right with a large wooden tub, lined with copper, in which the cake, mixed with water, is made into a thick soup. Adjoining this is a slate tank, of sufficient size to contain one feed for the entire lot of bullocks feeding. Into this tank is laid chaff with a three-grained fork, and pressed down firmly; and this process is repeated until the slate tank is full, when it is covered down for an hour or two before feeding time. The soup is then found entirely absorbed by the chaff, which has become softened and prepared for ready digestion. Mr. Wright, near Dunbar, gives the following account of an experiment with pulped roots and straw and oil-cake. It appears to prove the superiority of mixed foods over the same foods consumed separately:--