248. This is the _bed_ for the ice to lie on; and as you see, the top of the bed will be seventeen inches from the ground. The pressure of the ice may, perhaps, bring it to fourteen, or to thirteen. Upon this bed the ice is put, broken and pummelled, and beaten down together in the usual manner.
249. Having got the bed filled with ice, we have next to _shut it safely up_. As we have seen, there is a passage (_e_). Two feet wide is enough for this passage; and, being as long as the wall is thick, it is of course, four feet long. The use of the passage is this: that you may have _two doors_, so that you may, in hot or damp weather, shut the outer door, while you have the inner door open. This inner door may be of hurdle-work, and straw, and covered, on one of the sides, with sheep-skins with the _wool on_, so as to keep out the external air. The outer-door, which must lock, must be of wood, made to shut very closely, and, besides, covered with skins like the other. At times of great danger from heat, or from wet, the whole of the passage may be filled with straw. The door (_p._ FIG. 3) should face the North, or between North and East.
250. As to the _size_ of the ice-house, that must, of course, depend upon the _quantity_ of ice that you may choose to have. A house on the above scale, is from _w_ to _x_ (FIG. 2) twenty-nine feet; from _y_ to _z_ (FIG. 2) nineteen feet. The area of the circle, of which _a_ is the centre, is ten feet in diameter, and as this area contains seventy-five superficial feet, you will, if you put ice on the bed to the height of only five feet, (and you _may_ put it on to the height of seven feet from the top of the bed,) you will have _three hundred and seventy-five cubic feet of ice_; and, observe, a cubic foot of ice will, when broken up, fill much more than a _Winchester Bushel_: what it may do as to an "IMPERIAL BUSHEL," engendered like Greek Loan Commissioners, by the unnatural heat of "PROSPERITY," God only knows! However, I do suppose, that, without making any allowance for the "_cold_ fit," as Dr. Baring calls it, into which "_late_ panic" has brought us; I do suppose, that even the scorching, the burning dog-star of "IMPERIAL PROSPERITY;" nay, that even DIVES himself, would hardly call for more than two bushels of ice in a day; for more than two bushels a day it would be, unless it were used in cold as well as in hot weather.