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 they would be destroyed. The walls and roof of the room on the interior should also be swept annually to dislodge any pupae that might be hibernating in the cracks and crevices. With these precautions, there should not be many of the pests left within the building, though it is a hard matter when a house once gets badly infested to dislodge them entirely. There are so many hiding places about a plain shingle roof that it is next to impossible not to have some of these insects permanently lodged in the meat house. But with a good, hard floor, frequent sweeping and the use of plenty of black pepper on the meat, the number of the Dermestes should be reduced to the minimum. BACON KEEPS NOWHERE SO WELL