e meat so that the salt can penetrate and preserve it.

When sufficiently cured the meat should be hung up and dried. If it be
desired to have it smoked this is best done at the village bakery or
smoke drying house. Smoking of hams and bacon is possible on a small
scale with the aid of a smoke oven such as supplied by Messrs. Douglas
and Sons of Putney, but it is, as a rule, cheaper and less troublesome
to send the meat to the village smoking house. It will be advisable to
brand or otherwise mark each piece of cured meat sent to be smoked, as
the return of the same pieces is thus assured.

Where the home curing of bacon and hams is followed, this is best
carried out from the middle of October to the end of March; if it be
attempted earlier or later a cold chamber is necessary.

The manufacture of salt pork is carried on all the year through as the
meat is usually kept in the brine, where it will keep perfectly good for
a considerable time providing it is perfectly sweet when first placed in
the brine. To secure this it is advisable to have the pig killed in the
evening, covered over with a cloth to prevent the flies approaching it,
and hanging it in a cool place so that all the natural heat has escaped
ere it is cut up and placed in the pickle pot. It may be advisable to
note that the last is only possible with a small pig during the hot
weather. In the mere salting of pork it is usual to use only salt and
saltpetre. The use of sugar should be avoided in the summer, as its use
is likely to result in fermentation in hot weather.

There are two other points in connection with bacon curing on which a
change of opinion has taken place, or is taking place. These are the
cause of what are called in the trade "seedy bellies," and the effect on
the bacon of the female fat pig being in a state of [oe]strum when it is
slaughtered. Until quite recently the first of these troubles, and it is
a most serious one to the trade, was generally considered to be due to
the second. It was believed by curers that the slight inflammation
noticeable in the mammary glands of the female pig when she is in heat
resulted in these so-called "seedy bellies" if the pig was in that
condition when she was slaughtered. This belief may have been either the
cause or the result, or both, of the common saying that the meat of a
sow pig killed when it was in heat will not take the salt properly, and
that it is therefore advisable to wait until this natural