VI.] KEEPING PIGS. 89 



both sides of every cost, would as soon think of shoot- 

 ing their hogs as of fatting them on messes; that is 

 to say, for their own use, however willing they might 

 now-and-then be to regale the Londoners with a bit 

 of potato-pork. 



146. About Christmas, if the weather be coldish, 

 is a good time to kill. If the weather be very mild, 

 you may wait a little longer ; for the hog cannot be 

 too fat. The day before killing he should have no 

 food. To kill a hog nicely is so much of a profes^ 

 sion, that it is better to pay a shilling for having it 

 done, than to stab and hack and tear the carcass about. 

 I shall not speak of pork ; for I would by no means 

 recommend it. There are two ways of going to work 

 to make bacon ; in the one you take off the hair by 

 scalding. This is the practice in most parts of Eng- 

 land, and all over America. But the Hampshire way, 

 and the best way, is to burn the hair off'. There is a 

 great deal of difference in the consequences. The 

 first method slackens the skin, opens all the pores of 

 it, makes it loose and flabby by drawing out the roots 

 of the hair. The second tightens the skin in every 

 part, contracts all the sinews and veins in the skin, 

 makes the flitch a solider thing, and the skin a better 

 protection to the meat. The taste of the meat is very 

 different from that of a scalded hog; and to this chiefly 

 it was that Hampshire bacon owed its reputation for 

 excellence. As the hair is to be burnt off it must be 

 dry, and care must be taken, that the hog be kept on dry 

 litter of some sort the day previous to killing. When 

 killed he is laid upon a narrow bed of straw, not 

 wider than his carcass, and only two or three inches 

 thick. He is then covered all over thinly with straw, 

 to which, according as the wind may be, the fire is 

 put at one end. As the straw burns, it burns the 

 hair. It requires two or three coverings and burnings, 

 and care is taken, that the skin be not in any part burnt, 

 or parched. When the hair is all burnt off close, the 

 hog is scraped clean, but never touched with water. 

 The upper side being finished, the hog is turned over, 

 and the other side is treated in like manner. This 

 8* 



