252 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



that to cure a ham and do it well you must have an even 

 temperature, and for that reason all the large packers watch 

 the temperature of their bacon and ham rooms as carefully 

 as you would watch the temperature of your dairy room in 

 which you make your butter in summer. It is the most 

 indispensable point in curing hams to have an even tempera- 

 ture. You cannot cure them where the temperature is below 

 zero one day and the next is up to sixty or seventy degrees. 



Question. You do not put your bacon in brine at all ? 



Mr. Burnett. No, sir, I do not. 



Question. What temperature do you allow? 



Mr. Burnett. I should say between sixty and seventy 

 degrees. 



Mr. Bill. I was in Bristol County a few weeks since, 

 and a prominent agriculturist there was talking about the 

 pork market, and referred to Mr. Burnett's raising pork. 

 He said to me, "You would hardly credit, Mr. Bill, that 

 Mr. Burnett's sale of pork amounts to some $80,000 a year ? " 

 I said, '* No, sir ; I would not credit it." Now, we are face 

 to face to-day with Mr. Burnett, and perhaps it would not 

 be just the thing to say I do not credit it, but I would like 

 to ask him if he raises upon his own farm all the pork that 

 he puts into the market. 



Mr, Burnett. I thought everybody knew that my busi- 

 ness within the last few years has grown so that I do not 

 raise all the pork that I put into the market. My cus- 

 tomers generally know that I am buying pork all the time, 

 and I tell them so. But I do exercise the greatest care. 

 In the first place, I have scattered about in the three great 

 pork sections of this part of the country three buyers. 

 Those men are in my employ through the pork season. 

 Their pork is engaged frequently six months before it is 

 taken, and that pork is paid for above the market price. It 

 comes to my place, and is there generally fi'om two to four, 

 sometimes six weeks ; and then that pork, after going through 

 these men's hands, after being killed and dressed and cooled 

 for forty-eight hours, is put on the bench. I have two 

 or three men in my employ who can tell, and I myself 

 am such an expert that the moment my knife touches a pig 

 I can tell, whether the animal was fed on slops or corn-fe4. 



