376 
VARIETIES. 
peated  blows,  with  a  heavy  axe,  taking  the  lumps  below  to  thaw.  A  crow- 
bar, with  chiselled  edge,  extracted  the  laminae  badly ;  but  it  was,  perhaps, 
the  best  thing  we  could  resort  to. 
Sugar  formed  a  very  funny  compound.  Take  q.  s.  of  cork  raspings  and 
incorporate  therewith  another  q,  s.  of  liquid  gutta  percha  or  caoutchouc, 
and  allow  to  harden  ;  this  extemporaneous  formula  will  give  you  the  brown 
sugar  of  our  winter  cruise.  Extract  with  the  saw ;  nothing  but  the  saw 
will  suit.  Butter  and  lard,  less  changed,  require  a  heavy  cold  chisel  and 
mallet.  Their  fracture  is  conchoidal,  with  hsematitic  (iron  ore  pimpled) 
surface.  Flour  undergoes  little  change,  and  molasses  can,  at — 28  deg.,  be 
half  scooped,  half  cut,  by  a  stiff  iron  ladle. 
Pork  and  beef  are  rare  specimens  of  Florentine  mosaic,  emulating  the 
lost  art  of  petrified  visceral  monstrosities  seen  at  the  medical  schools  of  Bo- 
logna and  Milan;  crow-bar  and  handspike!  for  at — 30  deg.  the  axe  can 
hardly  chip  it.  A  barrel  sawed  in  half,  and  kept  for  two  days  in  the  Ca- 
boose house  at -|- 76  deg.,  was  still  as  refractory  as  flint  a  few  inches  below 
the  surface.  A  similar  bulk  of  lamp  oil,  denuded  of  the  staves,  stood  like 
a  yellow  sand-stone  roller  for  a  gravel  walk. 
Ices  for  the  desert  come  of  course  unbidden,  in  all  imaginable  and  un- 
imaginable variety.  I  have  tried  my  inventive  powers  on  some  of  them. 
A  Roman  punch,  a  good  deal  stronger  than  the  strongest  Roman  ever  tasted, 
forms  readily  at  — 20  deg.  Some  sugared  cranberries,  with  a  little  butter 
and  scalding  water,  and  you  have  an  impromptu  strawberry  ice.  Many  a 
time  at  those  funny  little  jams,  that  we  call  in  Philadelphia  "parties," 
where  the  lady-hostess  glides  with  such  nicely  regulated  indifference  through 
the  complex  machinery  she  had  brought  together,  I  have  thought  I  have  no- 
ticed her  stolen  glance  of  anxiety  at  the  cooing  doves,  whose  icy  bosoms 
were  melting  into  one  upon  the  supper-table  before  their  time.  We  order 
these  things  better  in  the  Arctic.  Such  is  the  «'  composition  and  fierce 
quality  "  of  our  ices,  that  they  are  brought  in  served  on  the  shaft  of  a  hic- 
ory  broom  ;  a  transfixing  rod,  which  we  use  as  a  stirrer  first  and  a  fork 
afterward.  So  hard  is  this  terminating  cylinder  of  ice  that  it  might  serve 
as  a  truncheon  to  knock  down  an  ox.  The  only  difficulty  is  in  the  pro- 
cesses that  follow.  It  is  the  work  of  time  and  energy  to  impress  it  with 
the  carving  knife,  and  you  must  handle  your  spoon  deftly,  or  it  fastens  to 
your  tongue.  One  of  our  mess  was  tempted  the  other  day  by  the  crystal 
transparency  of  an  icicle  to  break  it  in  his  mouth.  One  piece  froze  to  his 
tongue,  and  two  others  to  his  lips,  and  each  carried  off  the  skin  :  the  ther- 
mometer was  at — 28  deg." 
The  behaviour  of  Fermentation  and  Putrefaction  in  Filtered  Air.  By 
Schroder  and  Dusch. — According  to  the  rescearches  of  Schwan,  which 
Lave  excited  great  attention,  the  microscopic  germs  of  fermentation,  fungi, 
and  infusoria,  are  the  agents  which  develope  fermentation  and  putrefaction: 
