American bacon is considerably lower in price than English bacon, but it shrinks more when boiled, and you can get a larger number of slices from a given weight of English bacon than can be obtained from the other. Pork is the great stand-by of the poor man's dietary, by reason of its strong flavour as well as its low price, and the relish it affords to monotonous and insipid fare. The dripping from fried bacon is often preferred by children to the rancid stuff sold as butter to the poor ; and in any case the fat from bacon is more palatable with cabbage or potatoes than the suet of either beef or mutton could possibly be. It is easier to carry when cold into the fields; and another great advantage of bacon is that it requires less fire to cook it, and fewer utensils. From a scientific point of view, a diet in which bacon is the principal meat, needs to be largely supplemented by milk and other highly nitrogenous food, for it contains very little nitrogen itself, and we know that nitrogen is of great importance to the blood. Bacon supplies a fair amount of carbon, and does not therefore require the aid of bread. With the addition of a little pea-meal, the liquor in which bacon has been boiled makes a good soup, and it would be improved both in flavour and nutritive value by a few potatoes and an onion being boiled in it.

But as a general rule, however valuable the pig may be in an economical sense, it is quite certain that pork is less wholesome than almost any other meat. For the reasons why this should be so, we must go in the first place to the habits and ways of the animal itself, its absence of any guiding instinct about food - for quantity, not quality, appears to be the first principle of a pig's diet - and the motionless life it leads. Pigs which are turned out in a field run about too much to grow fat, and therefore, if it be necessary to use the animal for food, it is speedily relegated to its sty. There it never does anything except sleep and eat, and this want of exercise tells not only on the inordinate growth of fat which is laid up outside the body, but upon the muscles and fibres of the flesh, which become hard and indigestible. The pig stores up in its body three times more of its food than the ox, and from its large proportion of fat is not of equal value with beef or mutton in nourishing the system of those who need to make much muscular exertion. The leg of pork is the part of the body which, if deprived of its large proportion of fat, approaches the most nearly to the nourishing elements of beef or mutton. How ever, I do not for a moment expect that any scientific theories for or against pork will have any ill effect on the keeping of pigs or the curing of bacon. Happy is the family which can keep a pig; therefore, what does it matter whether it be a "highly nitrogenous food" or not ? Piggy pays the rent, and furnishes the "childer" with many a savoury bite besides. In fact, if any food can, in these high-priced days, be called economic, bacon deserves the name, for it goes further than any other meat. My remarks, therefore, must be taken to apply only to those who have a choice, and who therefore should use it more as a relish than as the principal ingredient in the family bill of fare.