AGRICULTURE TURNIP CUTTERS Cattle and sheep which have arrived at maturity are able to scoop turnips rapidly with their sharp, gouge-like front teeth, and so can be fattened on this kind of food without an absolute necessity of slicing it for them. Even for adult animals there is, however, an advantage in reducing turnips to pieces which they can easily take into their mouths, and at once get between their grinders without any preliminary scooping ; but for young stock, during the period of dentition, it is indispensable to their bare subsistence. It is largely through the use of slicing-machines that certain breeds of sheep are fattened on turnips, and got ready for the butcher at fourteen months old. It seems to be admitted on all hands that Gardener's patent turnip-cutter is the best that has yet been produced for slicing roots for sheep. It is now made entirely of iron, and is an exceedingly useful machine.

In cattle feeding it is not usually thought necessary to divide the roots given to them so minutely as for sheep. A simple machine, fashioned much on the principle of nut-crackers, by which, at each depression of the lever handle, one turnip is forced through a set of knives which divide it into slices each an inch thick, is very generally used in Berwickshire for this purpose. Many persons, however, prefer to have the turnips put into the cattle-troughs whole, and then to have them cut by a simple cross-bladed hand-chopper, which at each blow quarters the piece struck by it. The mode of housing fattening cattle largely determines whether roots can be most conveniently sliced before or after being put into the feeding-troughs.