Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/390

 36C) COTTAGE, FARM, AND VJLLA ARCHITECTUUE. found, wlicn opened in summer, to be as firm as a rock, and to require, at all times, the force of a pickaxe to break it up. Thus prepared it will be found to keep three times as long as by the common method in the house, and it will also keep three times as long wh.en exposed to the air, from salt water, and consequently salted ice, liaving a less capacity for heat than fresh water, or fresh ice." (Garrl. Mag., vol. iii. p. I;i9. ) 738. A very cool Place for the Preservation of Meat, Butter, Vegetables, Sfc, might be formed as follows : — Construct a frame of wooden or iron rods, in the form of a cone, or in any convenient form, and raise it from the ground on pillars between two and tliree feet higli ; form a door of wirecloth on one side, and one or two openings as windows, also filled in with wirecloth, on the other. Cover the whole, except the doors and windows, with a coating of cement, and form a double floor of boards. The result will now be a conical bottle of cement, with three wire openings in the sides. Place on the summit of the cone a vessel of water, or conduct a pipe of water there, and allow it to trickle down the sides of the cone, and the greater the heat of the weather, the cooler will the area be made within, by the heat carried off by evaporation. Perhaps it would be better to form the cone over a pit or well, and without any openings in its sides ; entering under ground to the pit or well, in which the heavier articles might be put, while the lighter ones were placed on slielves suspended from the roof. In an airy situation, in the shade, it is presumed the temperature, through the continued evaporation of the water, would be kept sufficiently low for every purpose that could be required from an ice-house pantry. Perhaps the water miglit be conducted more regularly from the apex to the base of the cone, by forming round it a screw gutter, something like the rings of a straw beehive. 739. A Room for smoking Hams and other dried Provisions is, in some countries, jiarticularly in Germany and Sweden, a general appendage to a coimtry house or a large farm. It is usually biult of stone or earth, and placed apart fiom other buildings. It may be a square room, ten feet on the sides, and ten feet higli, open to the roof; and it may have iron ceiling joists, at about two feet apart, in both sides of which hooks are fixed for suspending the articles to be smoked. The smoke is generally allowed to escape through crevices in the roof, or through chimneys or apertures formed of slates, or thin stones, placed like luffer-boarding ; but, in an improved construction, air-hole tiles, like that shown in fig. 4:54, or central luffer-boarded chimneys which admit of regulation, like those of stables, to be afterwards described, would be an admirable substitute ; because, while they admitted the escape of smoke, they would exclude the entrance of rain. In Germany, not only bacon, beef, and mutton hams are smoked in houses of this kind, both as a means of preservation, and to communi- cate a flavour ; but venison, geese, ducks, sahnon, cod, liaddock, eels, herrings, &c., are so cured. The preserving principle is the pyroligneous acid, which being purer in wood than in coal, the former is always employed. I'he flavour depends upon the kind of wood used : that most esteemed is communicated by the juniper, with which the Westi)halian hams and the Embdcn geese are smoked. The wood most generally next in use is the beech ; but in Sweden a.id in Pomerania the spruce fir is often used, either alone or in mixture with the birch. In Hampshire, and other counties, where much bacon is smoked, the kiln is egg-shaped, with a door in one side, and a covered chimney on the narrow end : the hams are sus])endcd from hooks in the roof, and a smothered fire of sawdust is kept up on the floor, by throwing on successive handfuls of sawdust. The sawdust of hard wood, such as oak, ash, beech, &c., is preferred to that of resinous trees. In Cambridgeshire, and other parts of England, hams and bacon are frequently smoked by hanging them in a wide kitchen chimney, and making a fire of sawdust on the hearth ; and, in the north of Scotland, gentlemen often send their bacon or mutton lianis, wrapped in paper, or coated in sawdust, to their tenants, to be hung up in their wide kitchen chimneys where peat is burned below. In the neighbourhood of Aberdeen, and in various places in the north of Scotland, haddocks are strung up on rods called spits, and suspended in wide chimneys, under which peat and sea-weed are burned, and some- times fir; though the flavour of the sea-weed and peat is greatly preferred. Red herrings are strimg by the gills on wooden spits, and these spits are suspended in rows above each Other, in a house which is kept filled with the smoke of birch for several weeks. As this process cannot require to be performed more than two or three times a yeai- on a private farm, the same apartment might serve for distillation ; or for smoking willows with sulphur, to bleach them, where basket-making was carried on ; or straw, where hat-making was practised. In the same room, also, articles of carpentry intended fnr the open air might be either saturated with ])yroligneous acid, or actually charred at the ends to be inserted in the groimd. The value of the saturation ])rocess is evident from the great durability of the timber of the roofs of cottages which have imperfect outlets for the smoke ; many in Scotland, and some in England, might be referred to as examples. 740. As an Example nf the essciitiat ArcdJiimodiitioiis of a Farm House on a small scale,