104 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



the melting of the ice must necessarily be in proportion to the reduction in 

 temperature; if the ice does not continuously melt, the temperature cannot 

 be lowered. From the bottom of this ice-box a tube should convey the 

 water outside the room, which should be at all times dry and well ventilated. 



Near the ceiling-, in the side of the room, and at the greatest distance 

 from the ice-box, should be an opening to let out the warmer air, which 

 is always ascending and passing away; and this opening should have a 

 cover, so as to regulate the size of the opening for the increase or decrease 

 of ventilation. The room itself should be double in its sides, floor and ceil- 

 ing, and as a confined space of air is the best known non-conductor, it need 

 not be filled in between the inner and outer covering, which should be 

 twelve inches apart. Such a room will maintain an even temperature, not 

 subject to variation; the ice-box should be covered, with a large tube lead- 

 ing outside the building above the ice, which should be placed on a grating 

 near the cover. In the end or side of the ice-box, and near the bottom, 

 should be an opening to permit the cold air to descend into the room; and 

 this opening should be as large as the opening above the ice for the recep- 

 tion of air. This opening should also have a sliding cover, to be worked 

 from the floor of the room by lever or cord, so that when the thermometer 

 below rises above thirty-six degrees it may be opened, or if it fall below it 

 may be closed; between the use of this opening and the exit for heated 

 air the temperature of the room may be steadily maintained. The amount 

 of ice used under this arrangement will be no greater, indeed less, than by 

 depositing fruit in an ordinary ice-house, as in any case the temperature 

 of the fruit can only be lowered at the expense of the ice. No mistake is 

 more common than that of placing ice in the bottom instead of the top of a 

 refrigerator, or room, to be cooled. 



Such a detention room may be supplied with shelves, leaving a part of 

 the floor for baskets of fruits, etc. The doors and windows should be 

 double, and the windows darkened, except when light is positively neces- 

 sary. With such an arrangement pears may be kept, if picked at the 

 proper time and carefully handled, until the proper dates for ripening, and 

 then by removing them to a ripoiing closet, at a temperature of one hundred 

 degrees Fahrenheit, they will ripen in four days or less ; and if kept dark 

 during the ripening, the color will be materially improved, often showing a 

 blush, which they will not have if ripened in the light. The catalogues of 

 Andrd Leroy, and other nurserymen, give the proper dates for ripening 

 each kind of pear, and at these dates only should they be removed from 

 the detention room to the ripening closet. 



In the large way the grower should sell his pears to the dealer from the 

 detention room at the proper dates for ripening, and the dealer should ripen 

 them in his own fruit closet, presenting them for sale to consumers as 

 ripened. 



The detention room here described would be invaluable to the growers 

 of fruits generally. Even apples, when treated as above described, are far 

 more juicy and palatable than when treated in the ordinary manner. Small 

 fruits, as picked, should be placed in the detention room, and when reduced 

 in temperature to from thirty-six degrees to forty degrees, they may be 

 carried to market in finer order than as ordinarily treated. Such a room 



