ow well, that it is the very _cheapest_ they can have; and
they, who look at both ends and both sides of every cost, would as soon
think of shooting 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 profession, 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 England, 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 work should always be done _before
day-light_; for in the day-light you cannot so nicely discover whether the
hair be sufficiently burnt off. The light of the fire is weakened by that
of the day. Besides, it makes th