9G8 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



needless outlay, and spending money eitlier to destroy the texture or the 

 flavor of the materials preserved. 



Where ice is at hand and ice-machines cannot be obtained, the use 

 of a very simple refrigerator maintained just below 32° will keep the 

 air diy, whilst its rapid circulation insures the more or less active shrink- 

 ing and x)reservation of the fish. It is most economical almost anywhere 

 to use an artificial process of producing the cold, for a building 70 feet 

 long by 40 feet wide, divided into two or more floors, can be kept in a 

 suitable state by a machine capable of producing only a coujile of tons 

 of ice dailj', at a cost not exceeding, under proi^er conditions, $100 per 

 month. 



Z.— THE GLACIAEIUM. 



I cannot refrain here from pointing out the great importance in such 

 cities as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, San 

 Francisco, and a host of minor ones — indeed, all above 25,000 inhabit- 

 ants — of establishing places where refrigerating-machines may serve to 

 produce pure and cheap ice, preserve provisions, favor such industries 

 as fishing and the inland transport of food, and provide, especially in 

 the South, the means of getting pure water from the sea instead of 

 rain-^^ater, or ministering to the comfort of the inhabitants in hot weather 

 by providing cool chambers at a temperature between 60° and 70^ for 

 purposes of recreation and athletic exercise. When I first constructed 

 an ice skating-floor, it was simply with a view to encourage people in 

 the idea that if engineers had been baifled by the difficidties of the sub- 

 ject, they were not insurmountable; but from the success in maintaining 

 such sheets of ice during the hottest weather in summer, and even in an 

 iron boat — the floating swimming-bath on the river Thames — ^led to a clear 

 perception of the field there was in the future for the processes, perhaps 

 too tardily developed. Ice-men only think of making ice, and in Eng- 

 land the scanty use of ice in the largest cities retards the introduction 

 of one of the most powerful aids to the promotion of heath, comfort, 

 and economy, viz, the artificial production of cheap cold. 



To recapitulate, a glaciarum includes — 



First. The manufacture of pure, transparent crystal ice, containing 

 as low as one-tenth of one per cent, of matter in solution or suspension, 

 and hence absolutely free of all known impurities calculated to render 

 water or ice unwholesome. 



Second. The manufacture of ice in bottles — the carafes frappees of the 

 Parisian cafi^s. 



Thkd. Cold stores for meats, preserved provisions, fish, game, fruits, 

 vegetables, &c. 



Fourth. Storerooms for the protection of all articles attacked by in- 

 sects during the summer, and which insects are killed, or arrested in 

 their process of reproduction and development, by temperatures ap- 

 proaching the freeziug-point of water. Thus, furs, feathers, woollen and 



