inch-thick boards are used for the weatherboarding, and sometimes the
studs are placed near enough together to prevent a person from getting
through between them. The house is built tall to give more room for meat
and to have it farther from the fire while it is being smoked. The
weatherboarding and the roof should be tight to prevent too free escape of
the smoke. No window, and but one door, is necessary. The floor should be
of clay, packed firm, or else laid in cement or brick. Indeed, it would be
better to have the entire walls built of brick, but this would add
considerably to the cost of construction.

THE ROOM SHOULD BE LARGE ENOUGH

to admit of a platform on one or both sides, upon which to pack the pork
when salted. There should be a salt barrel, a large wooden tray made of
plank, in which to salt the meat, and a short, handy ladder for reaching
the upper tier of joists. A large basket for holding chips, a tub for
water when smoking meat, a large chopping block and a meat axe, for the
convenience of the cook, are necessary articles for the meat house.
Nothing else should be allowed to cumber the room to afford a harbor for
rats or to present additional material for a blaze, in case a spark from
the fire should snap out to a distance. The house should be kept neatly
swept, and rats should not be allowed to make burrows under anything in
the room. The floor of the meat house should always be of some hard
material like cement or brick, or else clay pummeled very hard, so that
there would be no hiding place for the pupae of the Dermestes (parent of
the "skipper").

The skipper undergoes one or two moltings while in the meat, and at last
drops from the bacon to the floor, where, if the earth is loose, it
burrows into the ground and, remaining all winter, comes out a perfect
beetle in spring. A hard, impervious floor will prevent it from doing
this, and compel it to seek a nesting place elsewhere. The reason why
country bacon is sometimes so badly infested with the skipper is that the
house and floor afford or become an excellent incubator, as it were, for
the Dermestes, and the bacon bugs become so numerous that all the meat
gets infested with them. In case the floor of the smokehouse is soft and
yielding, it becomes necessary each winter, before the meat is packed to
salt, to remove about two inches of the soil and put in fresh earth or
clay in its place. Thus, many of the insects would be carried out, where
th