670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the accessories to modern life, especially in large towns ; and it is 

 -wholly to our credit that its free use has become a really noteworthy 

 national trait. 



Kew York has its ice-speculators and its Ice Exchange, and the 

 Ice Exchange has its bulls and bears, who watch the thermometer and 

 the weather as intently as their confreres in another market watch 

 railroad-construction and the ticker. An ice-trade journal, published 

 in Philadelphia, does valiant duty in endeavoring to establish the po- 

 sition of the ice-trade among the great industries of the world. 



From twenty to twenty-live million tons of ice are annually har- 

 vested in the United States, and not far from fifty million dollars are 

 invested in the business. It is probable that we use more ice annually 

 in the city of New York alone than is consumed on the whole Conti- 

 nent of Europe. It is said that, if all the ice-houses on the Hudson 

 River below Albany were placed side by side, the line would be not far 

 from seven miles long ! If we estimate the bulk of the entire amount 

 of ice annually harvested in the vicinity of New York each year, we 

 find that, if piled in a solid mass one hundred feet square, it would 

 make a column soaring nearly three miles into the air. We have 

 thus a veritable return of the Ice age — on quite a small scale, it is 

 true, in comparison with that which Nature brought about by tilting 

 up the strata and lowering the temperature of North America a fev/ 

 degrees ; but then man always cuts a rather sorry figure when his 

 " tinkerings " with the elements are brought into contrast with the re- 

 sults of Nature's wholesale and forceful work. A certain amount of 

 ice is brought to New York from Maine each year, but the quantity is 

 not large except after open winters, when the crop hereabout has been 

 a poor one. Norwegian ice, with which England is largely supplied, 

 has been at times brought here in small quantities, but under ordi- 

 naiy conditions it can not compete in the market with the domestic 

 product. 



Rockland, Highland, and Greenwood Lakes ; Swartout Pond, near 

 Rockland Lake ; an artificial pond called Lake Meheagh, on Verplank's 

 Point ; Tuckahoe Pond, on the Bronx River ; Van Cortland Pond, in 

 the new Van Cortland Park ; Ice or Ilinkley's Pond, on one of the 

 small tributaries of the Croton River ; and Lake Mahopac — all furnish 

 varying amounts of ice for our market. But the Hudson River be- 

 tween Poughkcepsie and Albany forms the principal source of our 

 supply. In the earlier days of ice-harvesting on a large scale upon the 

 Hudson there was a good deal of quarreling among the representatives 

 of the various companies as to their rights to particularly favorable ice- 

 fields, and lively skirmishes over evanescent and uncertain boundary- 

 lines took place between the employes of rival companies, with the 

 natural sequelaj of broken heads and noses. But with legally ac- 

 quired rigiits to the water-front on or near which the storage-houses 

 are built, and the occupation year after year of particular tracts upon 



