repository for ice during the summer months. The aspect of ice-houses should be towards the east or south-east, for the advantage of the morning sun to expel the damp air, as that is more pernicious than warmth; for which reason trees in the vicinity of an ice-house tend to its disadvantage. The best soil for an ice-house to be made in is chalk, as it conveys away the waste water without any artificial drain; the next to that is loose stony earth or gravelly soil.

Ice may be preserved in a dry place under ground, by covering it well with chaff, straw, or reeds. Great use is made of chaff in some places of Italy to preserve ice; the ice-house for this purpose need only be a deep hole dug in the ground on the side of a hill, from the bottom of which they can easily carry out a drain, to let out the water which is separated at any time from the ice, that it may not melt and spoil the rest. If the ground is tolerably dry, they do not line the sides with any thing, but leave them naked, and only make a covering of thatch over the top of the hole. This pit they fill either with pure snow, or else with ice taken from the purest and clearest water; because they do not use it, as we do in England, to set the bottles in, but really mix it with the wine. They first cover the bottom of the hole with chaff, and then lay in the ice, not letting it anywhere touch the sides, but ramming in a large bed of chaff all the way between; they thus carry on the filling to the top, and then cover the surface with chaff. Ice packed in this manner will keep as long as they please. When they take any of it out for use, they wrap up the lump in chaff, and it may then be carried to any distant place without waste or melting.

It appears from the investigations of Professor Beckman, in his History of Inventions, that the ancients, from the earliest ages, were acquainted with the method of preserving snow for the purpose of cooling liquors in summer. "This practice," he observes, "is mentioned by Solomon; and proofs of it are so numerous in the works of the Greeks and the Romans, that it is unnecessary for me to quote them, especially as they have been collected by others. How the repositories for keeping it were constructed we are not expressly told; but it is probable that the snow was preserved in pits or trenches.

"When Alexander the Great besieged the city of Petra, he caused thirty trenches to be dug, and filled with snow, which was covered with oak branches, and which kept in that manner for a long time. Plutarch says that a covering of chaff and coarse cloth is sufficient; and at present a like method is pursued in Portugal. Where the snow has been collected in a deep gulf, some grass or green sods, covered with dung from the sheep pens, is thrown over it; and under these it is so well preserved, that, the whole summer through, it is sent the distance of sixty Spanish (nearly 180 English) miles to Lisbon.

"When the ancients, therefore, wished to have cooling liquors, they either drank the melted snow, or put some of it in their wine; or they placed jars filled with wine in the snow, and suffered it to cool there as long as they thought proper. That ice was also preserved for the like purpose, is probable from the testimony of various authors; but it appears not to have been used so much in warm countries as in the northern. Even at present snow is employed in Italy, Spain, and Portugal; but in Persia ice. I have never anywhere found an account of Grecian or Roman ice-houses. By the writers on agriculture they are not mentioned."