FARMERS' REGISTER. 



109 



Bay that his srandl'alher hail seen the p;reat wall 

 ot China. Mr. Barrow, who saw it with Macart- 

 ney, went into some amusing calculations as to 

 the quantity of the materials it contains. Accord- 

 in<i: to his account, all the materials of all the dwell- 

 ing houses of England and Scotland, supposing 

 them at that period (at the end of the last century) 

 to amount to 1,800.000, and to average 2,000 cubic 

 leet of brick work or masonry, would be barely 

 equivalent lo the bulk ol' the wall, without taking 

 in its forlresses or towers, which he calculated 

 contained as much masonry and brick work as 

 London did at that time. Stupendous as was the 

 work; it failed in its object. 



ON 3IAKING GOOD BACON. 



From tlie Agriculturist. 



The beginning of a year is generally the time 

 for putting up pork for bacon ; as this is a stand- 

 ing dish in the west, I have concluded to give 

 you the result of thirty years' experience upon this 

 important subject. The first thing necessary to 

 make good bacon is to have fat hogs — slaughter 

 them in the beginning of the week, so that you can 

 take care of the ofl'al before Saturday night ; 

 otherwise, if a warm day or two should intervene, 

 part ofit may be lost. It is highly important that 

 hogs slaughtered for bacon, should be well bled — 

 the more completely the vessels are emptied of 

 blood, the less disposition there is in meat to taint 

 or putrefy. As soon as the hog is well cleaned 

 and hung up, it should be (reely washed with 

 warm water, wiped with a towel and carefully 

 scraped with a sharp kiiile, especially the head, 

 ears and leet, it you wi^h lo have good souse or 

 hogs-head-cheese. These parts are generally 

 neglected, and thrown by "lor a more convenient 

 season," and then taken up by the cook or some 

 idle chap about the establishment, and the hair 

 singed off, and the shin burned until it becomes 

 black and bitter, thereby imparting its color and 

 taste to the souse and hogs-head-cheese. Af- 

 ter gutting the hog, the inside should be carefully 

 and freely washed with cold luater, with the mouth 

 open, so that the whole may pass through the 

 throat, and remain in this condition until com- 

 pletely cool, which will generally take place, even 

 in moderate weather, in one night. W the wea- 

 ther should be so mild that it will not cool in one 

 night, it had better be cut up, and spread upon 

 brick and stone pavements, previously wet with 

 cold water ; if the meat is still soft, dash cold wa- 

 ter upon it, and it will soon be ready for the salt, but 

 in all cases it should be pcrfljctly cool if practica- 

 ble. In one or two instances I have made as good 

 bacon as I have ever made, out of meat frozen so 

 hard that it had to be cut up entirely with an axe. 

 As to the mode of salting and the quantity of salt 

 necessary to cure pork, so as to make good bacon, 

 every man thinks he knows better than his neigh- 

 bor. I have experimented for the purpose of as- 

 certaining the best mode of salting down pork, as 

 also the proper quatnilyof salt and other ingredi- 

 ents, such as sugar, molasses, red pepper and salt- 

 petre, all of which have their advocates, and have 

 settled down and pursued the following practice 

 for the last twenty years. I measure a bushel of salt 

 —spread it upon a table — weigh a pound of salt- 



petre, pulverize it carefully and mix it thoroughly 

 with the salt. This mixture is sufficient lor a 

 thousand weight of small meat or eight hundred of 

 large, to be well rubbed upon every piece, and 

 more especially upon the fleshy surface, taking 

 care to pack your joints at the bottom and fill up 

 the little interstices, with jowls, chine and rounds 

 — the latter piece is made by cutting the neck off 

 at the shoulder and jowl. The length of time ne- 

 cessary to keep pork in salt to make bacon depends 

 upon the weather and the size of the meat. If 

 the weather is mild and the meat small, four weeks 

 will be long enough ; but if the weather is cold 

 and the meat large, it should remain in salt from 

 six to eight weeks, and should be taken up at the 

 end of four weeks and well rubbed and sprinkled 

 with salt, in case the first has dissolved. It is then 

 to be hung up in a dark smoke-house, and the 

 darker the better, for the purpose of excluding flies 

 — you will never find flies in a room where the light 

 is completely shut out. The higher your smoke- 

 house the better, so that you may hang your meat 

 out of the influence of the heat — every joint and 

 jowl should be hung by the thick end and every 

 middling by the thick edge, or that part of the 

 middling that was cut li-om the back bone ; this 

 I knoio to be a matter of the first consideration in 

 making good bacon — by attending strictly to 

 this rule, you will retain all the juices of the 

 meat, as well as the salt that has been absorbed — 

 or in other words, your meat will not drip ; where- 

 as, if you reverse the position and hang it by the 

 small end, it will drip, become dry and hard and 

 lose in weight, and what I conceive to be of more 

 importance its fine flavor. Some who make good 

 bacon, think that it is important to smoke your 

 meat with some particular kind of wood, but 1 

 imagine the only secret about this matter, is the 

 bitterness imparted to the meat, thereby render- 

 ing the taste unpleasant to the fly, and by keeping 

 up a continual smoke, you create an atmosphere 

 that the fly cannot live in — viewing the matter 

 thus, we have every day or two thrown a few 

 pods of red pepper upon the smokewood — this 

 produces an atmosphere very unfit for the respira- 

 tion of man, and I apprehend equally so for the 

 fly. Our meat continues suspended in the smoke- 

 house during the year, is lightly smoked every 

 morning and plentifully smoked every damp day. 

 If your readers will observe these rules, I will al- 

 most venture to insure such bacon as would make 

 any epicure smack his chops. J ohn Shelby. 



BARN CELLARS. 



From tlie Yanlice Farmer. 

 Though the raising of roots to any amount of 

 consequence, for stock, is of recent introduction in 

 this country, yet enough has been done in this 

 wa)^ to convince every observing farmer that it is a 

 profitable business, and so evident are its advan- 

 taires, that it will soon be attended to extensively. 

 Most farmers who raise many roots find an in- 

 convenience lor want of a suitable place to store 

 them, as hut very few have barn cellars for this 

 purpose; and when the house cellar is sufllciently 

 large, there is great inconvenience in carrying the 

 roots to the barn as they are fed out in winter. Be- 

 sides this disadvantage, a large quantity of roots 



