January 12. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
279 
I 
I 
crystal fountain itself, and so all round to the English 
dolls. To make hoar-frost by the side of the fire, you 
have only to take a wooden pail, or bucket, with iron 
hoops on, and half fill it with snow, and mix one-third 
common salt with the snow, and set the bucket so 
near the fire that the heat will melt the snow. As 
the snow melts it dissolves the salt; and the melting 
will produce such intense cold as will make actual 
hoar-frost on the iron hoops, and sooner, if they are 
wetted a little, on the side farthest from the fire. If the 
wood of the bucket is damp, and an equal quantity of 
snow and salt is melting, the hoar-frost will soon 
appear on the outside of the bucket, but not so soon as 
on the iron hoops. I have seen this done scores of 
times; and the wildest and most mischievous prank a 
boy can be guilty of is to get another boy to put his 
tongue on the frosted iron hoop, pretending that the 
hoop is hot all the while—in two or three seconds the 
tongue will stick to the hoop, so as to tear off the skin 
before it can be released—so let no one try this experi¬ 
ment until he learns to take off the tongue as quickly 
as the twinkling of the eye. 
Now, a bucket more than half-filled with ice pounded 
vory small, and a good quantity of common salt mixed 
with it, will give nearly the same degree of cold any day 
in the year; and so things are iced. Every iced thing 
one can buy in London is done by ice and salt melting 
in a wooden vessel, or ought to be in a wooden one; but, 
of course, any other vessels might answer nearly as well. 
The iced things you buy at public stalls near London, 
and other large places, might have been made at Inver¬ 
ness, and sent up in wooden casks, packed like Dutch 
and Irish butter, if they had free communication by rail 
beyoud Aberdeen so far; then they scoop it out of these 
casks with strong wooden spoons, put it on china 
plates—then, and not till then, is it ready for your order. 
Pewter vessels are the best to put the creams in for 
iceing, and they are to be bought in London of all sorts 
and sizes as easily as beer pots, but I do not know 
where in London. 
To make a bowl, a tea-cup, or a plate, of ice, all that 
you have to do is to get the mould (of pewter), fill it 
with the clearest water, and put it in the ice-bucket, 
covering it all over with a little salt, besides the salt 
already mixed with the ice in the bucket; let this be 
done two hours before the plate or other vessel is 
wanted at table, and place the bucket in a cool room ; 
the larder is as good as any place in summer; in the 
wintertime any place will do away from the fire; just 
when they are ready to go in to breakfast, have so many 
pats of butter, made that morning, standing on ice, and 
get a nice common breakfast-plate on the ice, with the 
butter, but the butter must not be on the plate that goes 
to table. Now, get out your pewter-plate mould, and 
before you open it, plunge it in a bucket of warm-water, 
such as you could bear your hand in, and leave it in 
half a minute, but you must learn the exact time by 
experience, as one mould requires moro time than 
another that might seem of the same size and substance; 
the reason for dipping the mould into the warm-water 
is to free the ice-plate from the inside of it; now open 
the lid of the mould, and slip out the ice-plate on a 
clean, dry cloth or towel, wipe it all round, to get oft'the 
damp caused by the hot-water, and put it on the cold 
china plate, and put the cold butter on it, and ofl' you 
go as fast as anything straight to the breakfast-table, 
aud who knows how the crystal plate and cold, firm 
butter was got; but there it is, sure enough. 
Imitations of Strawberries, and other fruit, also of all 
kinds of fishes and birds, fancy things, and what-not, 
may be done in ice after the same manner, for the 
dinner or breakfast-table. For pic-nic parties, what is 
easier than to carry along with you as much of iced- 
cream as will cool the whole party, in little wooden 
casks or jars, rolled in woollen cloth or Welsh flannel. 
Mr. Gunter would send any quantity of ice-cream to 
Aberdeen, and it would be as firm aud cold as when it 
left his still-rooms in London, till the last particle of it 
was consumed. 
There is a good deal of practice and expertness re¬ 
quired to manago all this, aud the first attempts will be 
like the first lessons in music, or drawing, or dancing, 
or anything else; and for a whole life-time some persons 
will succeed much better than others. Tn getting up 
fifty varieties of things, or moulds, out of the ice- 
buckets, one person ought to manage the plunging hot 
bath, and slide out the ices as fast as possible, on some¬ 
thing cool aud dry; and a second to take them up equally 
fast, and arrange them on cool plates or dishes; and a 
third carry them off to the dining-room with all speed. 
But be sure of one thing—see that auy deformed article 
is not the perquisite of the operators, else there may be 
more of them than will cool their ardour in the work. 
Ice-buckets ought to have a few drainage holes at the 
bottom to let off the water as the ice melts, and wooden 
hoops are better than iron ones, as the latter rust, aud 
take the cold faster to their sides. As to the real 
quantity of salt to be used, I cannot just say, by weight 
or measure; the very commonest will do, and if you 
were to put weight for weight of ice it would not spoil 
it, but far less will do, and you will need much more of 
the salt in summer. D. Beaton. 
SNOW AS A PROTECTOR. 
“ My cold pits have got covered with snow ; shall I 
sweep it oil', so that the plants beneath may have a little 
sunlight, when there is any in these frosty days; or 
should I allow it to remain until a change in the 
weather removes it? I don’t mind covering aud un¬ 
covering, if I shall advantage my plants by my labour.” 
This is the purport of many enquiries from friends 
who cannot see how our general principles are to be 
applied to particular cases. If only part of what has 
been said of protecting materials be correct, then snow, 
when loose, and sufficiently thick to prevent trost pene¬ 
trating, is one of the very best protectors we could use. 
Its colour places it low in the scale either as an ab¬ 
sorbent, or a radiator of heat. Even where there is a 
little sun, about the shortest day, if the frost is at all 
keen, the sun will affect the snow merely on the surface, 
and what is softened there will be congealed again by 
the frost of night, but still leaving a quantity ol lighter 
matter beneath it. As long as this light, flossy matter 
remains between the glass and this surface that is 
softened and hardened by turns, there will bo no danger 
of frost of a few degrees penetrating by the glass that 
would injure half-hardy plants usually kept in such 
places. Care should, however, be taken that the trost 
does not euter through the walls, or by the ends of the 
sashes where they rest on the wall plates. When, how¬ 
ever, the snow is alternately melted and frozen, so as 
to resemble a cake of ice on the glass, it would then be 
necessary to throw some litter over all to prevent the 
greater radiation of heat from within, as the very com¬ 
pression of the snow squeezed out, as it were, all the 
confined air, the possession of which, independent of 
its colour, made it a bad radiator, aud a good non¬ 
conductor of heat. 
Now, if in such a pit the heat within was not high 
enough to melt the snow contiguous to the glass, that 
heat would not be sufficient to lengthen the tissues of 
the plant, nor yet to cause fungous broods in the shape 
of damps to spread. Hence, for the mere preserving of 
a plant—the maintaining it, so far as its nature will 
permit, in a state of healthy rest—it matters but little 
whether that rest be a period of fourteen hours or four- 
