EGGS IN COLD STORAGE. 51 



Illation. This is quite inefficient, because eggs are 

 mostly stored during two or three months in the 

 spring, and removed from storage during the fall and 

 winter, leaving three or four months when no fresh 

 air of consequence can penetrate to the room, except 

 as the doors may be opened for the purpose of taking 

 the temperature of the room. Furthermore, this 

 kind of ventilation during the warm weather of sum- 

 mer and during a large part of the spring and autumn 

 months is worse than no ventilation at all. Some stor- 

 age men even take so radical a position on this matter 

 of opening doors during warm weather, as to insist 

 that the door shall not be opened for the purpose of 

 reading the thermometer. A double window is placed 

 in the door of each room, with the thermometer hang- 

 ing so that it can be read from the outside without 

 opening the door. While the writer has not practiced 

 this method, it seems to be a good idea, and it is cer- 

 tainly preferable to ventilating the room through 

 doors which open to the outside air. When doors 

 into rooms open into a corridor, the evil can be partly 

 prevented by piping the corridor overhead, so that 

 the moisture and impurities may be taken up in this 

 way; but opening the door or window of a storage 

 room directly to the outside air when the temperature 

 outside is materially higher will always result in 

 more or less bad effect on the goods, as a result of the 

 water vapor, in the warmer incoming air being con- 

 densed on same. 



Another source of ventilation similar in its results 

 to the opening of a door or window is that resulting 

 from the leakage of air directly into the storage room, 

 through the pores and crevices in the walls around the 

 doors and windows, etc. leakage of air literally air 

 that gets in when everything is supposed to be closed. 

 The amount is usually imperceptible, but is enough 

 in some houses to be a serious detriment to the quality 

 of work done. In small houses with large outside ex- 



