502 



MISCELLANEOUS GARDEN STRUCTURES. 



The ice-house is in general placed in 

 some obscure and out of the way sort of 

 place, and often, to get it completely hid- 

 den, is situated at a most inconvenient dis- 

 tance from the mansion, entailing great 

 and unnecessary waste of time in supplying 

 the ice for domestic purposes. Why this 

 is so, it is difficult to say ; and why the 

 ice-house itself has not been made orna- 

 mental as well as useful, is equally 

 strange. The section and elevation, figs. 

 718, 719, will show how this could be 



Fig. 718. 



Fig. 719. 



effected, and also how it may, in many 

 instances, be brought within a convenient 

 distance of the house, by having the en- 

 trance constructed as in fig. 719, and 

 which may be used as an alcove or resting- 

 place, rendered sufficiently ornamental by 

 giving it a slight expression of architec- 

 tural character. 



Preserving ice in stacks on the surface 

 has been for years more or less practised, 

 and with various degrees of success — this 

 success of course depending greatly on the 

 situation chosen, and the care with which 

 the operation was performed. Mr Pearson 

 of Kinlet, in the first number of "The United 

 Gardeners' Journal," brought the subject 

 prominently forward in a way which at 

 the time attracted considerable attention, 

 as, even in regard to what were considered 

 well-constructed ice-houses, complaints 

 had often arisen that the ice did not keep 

 in them. In addition to this, the expense 

 of building an ice-house fit for the supply 

 of an ordinary family runs, in general, from 

 ,£70 to £100 — of course depending a good 

 deal on the expense of the material in the 

 locality. By the method now proposed 

 this expense is saved, and a supply of ice 

 produced at little more than the cost of 

 annually filling an ordinary ice-house. 



In the third number of the paper 

 last quoted, Mr Pearson has republished 

 his mode of proceeding, accompanied with 

 a section of the ice-stack when finished, 

 fig. 720. The ice is collected and broken 



small much in the usual manner. " After 

 the work has got a fair start, thirteen or 

 fourteen men are employed in breaking 

 the ice as small as possible with wooden 

 mallets, while five or six are taking it off 

 the pool and casting it to the mound ; " 

 for, as will be seen by the diagram, the 

 stack is formed close to the pond, so that 

 . no carting is required. " Thus the work 

 proceeds till the mass is 1 or 2 feet thick, 

 when two of the beaters lay down their 

 malls and take up large paving rammers 

 and commence ramming the ice down into 

 a compact body. The ramming, being, if 

 well kept up, the hardest work in the pro- 

 cess, is done in turn by the men. The ac- 

 companying sketch represents the mound 

 of ice we made early in December 1844, 

 15 feet high, with a base of 27 feet, and 

 a covering of fern, as there indicated, 

 about 3 feet thick ; and though the cattle 

 frequently trample round it during the 

 summer, and almost expose the sides of 

 the heap to the atmosphere, yet we have 

 a considerable stack of ice left," (January 

 1846.) As some doubts have been ex- 

 pressed as to the keeping of ice by this 

 means — although we have no doubt of it 

 ourselves, considering the great respec- 

 tability of the author of this paper — we 

 will, injustice to him and our readers, con- 

 tinue our extracts from his paper : — 



" Ice being scarce in the winter of 

 1843-4, we embraced the first oppor- 

 tunity of making a mound of snow. We 

 made it at the head of the pool, so that if 

 ice could be got at any future time during 

 the winter, it might be easily added to 

 the snow. In the morning of the second 

 day we found ice an inch thick on the 

 pool, and the second day's work was, 

 therefore, a mixture of snow and ice, the 



