ICE-HOUSES.—BUTE COTTAGE.-CULTURE OF INDIGO. 
345 
perfectly clean, you must put a No. 20 sieve in place 
of No. 12. 
Be careful that the mill stands level, that the grain 
works equal on the sieves, and keep it well oiled with 
winter strained lamp oil The sieves are numbered 
according to the number of meshes to the square inch. 
The fan-mills are for sale at our agricultural ware¬ 
house No. 187 Water street. 
ICE-HOUSES 
We need not go to China to learn how to make 
an ice-house. “A cheap plan for an ice-house,” has 
been known in this ice-growing country of ours so 
long, that the fashion has got to be so old it has been 
forgotten. Where hay or straw is plenty, it has the 
merit of cheapness as well as goodness. It is built 
thus: 
Mark a circle upon the ground (if for a single 
family), say 12 feet diameter, and drive a row of 
stakes 18 inches apart, 6 feet high: outside of this, 
set another circle of stakes, 4 feet from the inner 
one; now fill in very compactly with coarse hay or 
straw between the rows of stakes; cut out a space 
for a passage, which must have two doors to fit tight; 
lay poles across the inner space, and build up a 
stack to shed off the water ; lay some poles or brush 
in the bottom to keep the ice off the ground, which 
keep well drained, and your “ cheap ice-house” wili 
keep itself and yourself cool. 
Try it. I assure you that it will keep in till you 
are tired of it, and then it will make the old sow and 
pigs a capital hen roost. Solon Robinson. 
New York, October, 1845. 
The annexed is a sketch of the beautiful 
cottage of William Bailey Lang, Esq., at 
Roxbury, near Boston, Massachusetts. It 
contains a porch, small entrance hall, parlor, 
library, dining room, china closet, two store 
rooms, ten bed rooms (seven of which have 
upright walls), two dressing rooms, a kitchen, 
larder, two cellars, and a pump room. It is 
warmed throughout by a furnace. The 
style is* Elizabethan, and is no less varied 
than picturesque, and combines much com¬ 
fort in it. The porch may be made so wide 
as to admit a carriage to drive under, so that 
let it be ever so stormy, one can get out and 
in without being exposed to the weather. 
The large projecting windows are delightful; 
and the jutting roof makes the building 
warmer in winter and cooler in summer, and 
protects the walls from the rain, thus keep¬ 
ing them much drier than it is possible for narrower- 
eaved roofs to do. Upon the whole, this cottage is 
quite to our taste, and we think it particularly appro¬ 
priate to the changeable climate of the northern states. 
We are pleased to notice that the Gothic style is 
finding favor in the country, and that its picturesque 
forms now frequently greet the traveller in his wan¬ 
derings among* us. Views, with ground plans and 
descriptions, of this and other “ Highland Cottages,” 
are published and are for sale by Saxton & Miles, 
205 Broadway, New York, and we commend the 
work to the notice of ail persons interested in rural 
architecture. The book is remarkably well got up, 
and the plates are beautiful specimens of lithography. 
CULTURE OF INDIGO 
It being quite out of the question to make a living 
in my neighborhood by cotton planting, I am turning 
my attention to something else. Sugar is the first 
article to attract attention, as it is extremely profita¬ 
ble, but it requires a fortune to begin with, and is out 
of my reach. Indigo, I have thought, might answer, 
but from a small trial I have just made, it does not 
appear so. My little trial, it is true, ;s not a fair test, 
but such as it is, you shall have it. 
I planted, early in the spring, a piece of new 
ground in indigo, on which nothing had ever pre¬ 
viously been planted, and after leaving plants enough 
to give me seed for another year, cut and measured a 
Fig 75. 
piece of the following dimensions, yiz., 1176 links 
of the English surveyor’s chain, by 150 links, which 
multiplied into each other, gives 176,400; dividing 
this by one hundred thousand, the number of square 
links in an acre, it gives somewhat more than one 
acre and three quarters. From this I cut weeds to fill 
four troughs, or vats, wnich, after being filled with 
the weed, held 120 gallons of water, which, after 
steeping about seven hours in the daytime, or eleven 
hours at night, I drew off into another vat, and beat 
from forty to fifty minutes, when I found that it 
would readily settle, and put in the lime water (about 
one quart), for that purpose, keeping the froth down, 
of course, with oil. In this last trough or vat 1 had 
two spigot holes, one above the other, and of one I 
allowed the far greater part of the water to run, and 
then draw out the indigo and the remainder of the 
water in a rather coarse cotton cloth placed in a box 
with holes in the bottom of it, the cloth acting as 
strain, and the holes in the bottom of the box let¬ 
ting the water run from the indigo. This I put in a 
press for twenty-four hours, in a wooden frame 
placed on a bench, with grooves, or rather saw-cuts 
across it, to allow the remainder of the water to run 
out. I now took out the indigo, still wet, cut it in 
pieces, and dried it in the sun ; out of the sun it ap¬ 
peared to be impossible to dry it. When the indigo 
was taken out of the press, each making averaged 
