WINTER FIELD MEETING. 61 



happened but once before in the history of the establish- 

 ment. 



The whole amount of Ice shipped from AVenham Lake, 

 by the firms of Gage, Hittinger & Co. and Addison Gage 

 & Co. from 1856 — the records from 1851 to 1855 inclu- 

 sive are missing, — to Jan'y 1882 is 353,450 tons, actual 

 car weight, packed on board vessels at East Boston, to 

 ship which it is necessary to cut and house at least 475,000 

 tons, the difference being the waste in, meltage and 

 breakage in handling ; of amount the shipped, not over 70 

 per cent, on the average is landed at the ports of destina- 

 tion, principally the southern ports of the United States 

 and the West India Islands, while not over 33 per cent, of 

 the whole amount shipped is sold. 



It is to be observed, therefore, that of the to?i cut and 

 housed, but a very small portion reaches the consumer. 



The AVenham Lake Ice still maintains the high reputa- 

 tion which it immediately acquired on its introduction 

 into the market, and to-day is advertised as sold in all the 

 large cities of the United Kingdom, although not a ton of 

 it has reached there excepting, perhaps, in the refrigerator 

 of a Cunarder, for over thirty years. 



In nearly all those cities there is a Wenham Lake Ice 

 Company, but the ice wdiich they sell is from Wenham 

 Lake, Norway, not from the one we know so well and 

 have enjoyed so much. 



The ice at this time was 14 inches thick and several 

 acres of surface w^ere ready for storing, being cleared of 

 the recent snow fall by a horse-power scraper, — grooved 

 and ploughed by other machines similarly propelled and 

 lifted into the store-houses by steam power on the eleva- 

 tor, a mechanism not unlike the endless apron. Manual 

 labor is on\y applied at two points of the process. A lit- 

 tle hand sawing is required in separating the cakes of ice, 



