174 <"^ fitakitig ice in India. -^"g' /• 



From these circumstances it appears, that water, 

 by being placed in a situation free from receiving heat 

 from other bodies, and exposed in large surfaces to 

 the air, may be brought to freeze, when the tem- 

 perature of the atmosphere is some degrees above 

 the freezing point, on the scale of Fahrenheit's ther- 

 mometer; and, by being collected and amafsed into 

 a large body, is thus preserved, and rendered fit for 

 freezing other fluids, during the severe heats of the 

 summer season. In effecting which there is also an 

 establifhed mode of proceeding ; the flierbets, creams, 

 or whatever other fluids are intended to be frozen, 

 are confined in thin silver cups of a conical form, 

 containing about a pint, with their covers well lu- 

 ted on with paste, and placed in a large vefsel filled 

 with ice, salt petre, and common salt, of the two 

 last, an equal quantity, and a little water to difsolve 

 the ice, and combine the whole. This composidon 

 presently freezes the contents of the cups to the 

 same consistency of our ice creams, "iSc. in Europe ; 

 but plain water will become so hard, as to require a 

 mallet and knife to break it. Upon applying the bulb 

 of a thermometer to one of these pieces of ice thus fro- 

 zen, the quicksilver has been kr.own to sink two or 

 three degrees below the freezing point. So that from 

 an atmosphere apparently not cold enough to produce 

 natural ice, ice fliall be formed, collected, and a cold 

 accumulated, that fliall cause the quicksilver to fall 

 even below the freezing point. The promising advan- 

 tages of such SI discovery could alone induce the Afiia- 

 tic, (whose principal study is the luxuries of life, and 

 this may well be calLd such, when I have often re- 



