92 KEEPING PIGS. [No. 



as in a close and damp cellar. Put a lump of ice in 

 cold water, and one of the same size before a hotjire, 

 and the former will dissolve in half the time that the 

 latter will. Let me take this occasion of observing, 

 that an ice-house should never be under ground^ or 

 under the shade of trees. That the bed of it ought 

 to be three feet above the level of the ground ; that 

 this bed ought to consist of something that will admit 

 the drippings to go instantly off; and that the house 

 should stand in a place open to the sun and air. This 

 is the way they have the ice-houses under the burn- 

 ing sun of Virginia ; and here they keep their fish and 

 meat as fresh and sweet as in winter, when at the 

 same time neither will keep for twelve hours, though 

 let down to the depth of a hundred feet in a well. 

 A Virginian, with some poles and straw, will stick 

 up an ice-house for ten dollars, worth a dozen of those 

 ice-houses, each of which costs our men of taste as 

 many scores of pounds. It is very hard to imagine, 

 indeed, what any one should want ice for, in a country 

 like this, except for clodpole boys to slide upon, and to 

 drown cockneys in skaiting-time ; but if people must 

 have ice in summer, they may as well go a right way 

 as a wrong way to get it. 



150. However, the patient that I have at this time 

 under my hands wants nothing to cool his blood, but 

 something to warm it, and, therefore, I will get back 

 to the flitches of bacon, which are now to be smoked; 

 for smoking is a great deal better than merely drying, 

 as is the fashion in the dairy countries in the West of 

 England. When there were plenty of /arm-houses, 

 there were plenty of places to smoke bacon in; since 

 farmers have lived in gentleman's houses, and the 

 main part of the farm-houses have been knocked 

 down, these places are not so plenty. However, there 

 is scarcely any neighbourhood without a chimney left 

 to hang bacon up in. Two precautions are necessary : 

 first, to hang the flitches where no rain comes down 

 upon them : second, not to let them be so near the fire 

 as to melt. These precautions taken, the next is, that 

 the smoke must proceed from wood^ not turf, peat, or 



