Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 10.djvu/488

* ICE. 426 ICE INDUSTRY. Coulson and Forbes, The Lair Relating to Waters (London, 1902) ; and the statutes of the various ••Stati-. ICE AGE. See Glacial Period; Pleistocene ICE-BEAR. The polar bear. See Beaji. ICEBERG. See Uk. ICE-BREAKING STEAMER. A vcs.sel used for ket|iiiij.' open a navij;al)h' pa^sape throujjh iee. JSueh vessels are niuih u«i(l on the Great Lakes of the Lnited States, where they are usually adapted for earrying cargoes or railway ears. They are very heavily built to stand the shock of ramming the ice (jr of running up on it at the bow and breaking it by reason of their weight. During the past few years the |)r(ibleni of constructing such vessels has been studied by Admiral MakarolT, of the Kusslan .Navy, ami several vessels have been built from his designs. The largest of these was built in England in IS'.l.S-ll'J, and is called the ermak. She is of SOOO tons displacement and has four screws, one under the overhanging bow to suck down the ice, so that the bow will ride •over it. and, descending, crush it. This screw also creates a current which drives the broken iee astern. The stern is recessed to receive the bow of a vessel follow ing her through the channel which she makes. Her length is 305 feet ; beam, 71 feet; and draught. 25 feet. The coal capacity is very great — 3000 tons — as it was intended to use her in Arctic exploration: she spent some months in the Arctic Ocean during the summer of 1000, and was very successful in breaking her vay through ice-fields in harbors; but in 1901, against the heavy ice of the polar pack, she jiroved inenicicnt. ICE-CAVE. Any natural fmmation of ice in a cave or crevice. The walls of caves often be- come cofded to such a point by the inliltration of cold air in winter or during the frosty nights of spring and autumn, that the percolating waters rapidly freeze. The ice usually disappears for a few weeks in September. The most celebrated ice-cave in the world is that of Dobsehau (Dob- sina), in Hungary, situated in the Carpathians, at an elevation of about 2700 feet. Consult Balch, Glacieres or Frcczin;} Caverns (Philadelphia, 1900). ICE-COLUMNS. See Frost. ICE-GULL. A name given to several gulls oncoiiiilircd )iy sailors in icy regions, most prop- erly pcihaps t.i Ttciss's gull." See GfLL. ICE INDUSTRY, The. The ice industry is divided into two branches, in accordance with the origin of the ice itself, yatiiral ice is cut in winter from rivers, lakes, and ponds, stored in icehouses, and distributed to consumers as needed. Manufactured ice. or. as it is more commonly called, urlifieinl iee. is produced when and where required, and is generally distributed with comparatively little intervening storage. The collection and preservation of ice and snow, on a scale which was small indeed as compared with the operations of the present day. appear to have been practiced from early times by most civilized nations having the natural products within their reach. Where neither snow nor iee was provided by nature, various means of ar- tificial production have been practiced in a small way for centuries; such as the exposure of water in porous receptacles, and packing common or some other kind of salt about vessels containing water. Hut the modern ice industry began in the United States early in the nineteenth cen- tury, with the transportation of ice in sailing ships from cold northern to warm southern ports; and the production and sale of manufac- tured ice has, within the last twenty-five or thirty years, attained large proportions and made an ample and cheap ice-supply quite inde- pendent of local leinperatures. Natlual Ice. It is said that both the Greeks ' and the Uonians packed snow in deep under- ground pits, and that Xero established ice-houses in Rome. At the end of the seventeenth century dealers in ice and snow were quite coinmoii in France. In 1799 a cargo of iee, cut from a pond near Canal Street, in New York City, was shipjied to Charleston. S. C. This may be con- sidered as of little moment; but in the winter of 1805-00 Frederick Tudor, of Boston. .Mass.. entered the iee field in good earnest, and. after some heavy losses, succeeded in establishing an export trade in ice which was the beginning of the modern industry. Tudor's first ice cargo, of 130 tons, was shipped from Boston to Martinique in the winter of ISOo-OO, but though the ice reached its destination in safety, the venture re- sulted in a loss. Two years later a shipment ot 2-10 tons to Havana, Cuba, also resulted in a loss to Tudor. A monopoly of the ice trade with the British West Indies was secured by Tudor about ISlfi. and a like privilege from Spain in 1815-10. From 1815 to 1820 the .same merchant extended his iee trade to Charleston. S. C, Savannah, Ga., and Xew Orleans. La. Others followcil his ex- ample, until in 1855 ice exports from the United States, according to statistics of tho Treasury Department, amounted to 41.117 tons, valued at .$190,793. These exports increased to 08.80* tons, valued at $207,702, in 1870, since which time, according to the authority alreadv cited, there has been an almost constant decrease, until in 1900 the tonnage was only 13,720, and its value $29,501. If the figures were available it would doubtless appear that the foreign ice trade was soon outstripped by the domestic com- merce in what has long since changed from a luxury to a necessity. The Ice Trade Jotininl has published figures for the harvest of JIaino and Hudson Kiver ice for the years 1878 to 1900, inclusive, which show that those two sources alone produced vearlv quantities ranging, from 2.220.000 tons in 1880 to 5.026.430 tons in 1899. The capacity of Hudson River iee-houses in 1900 was placed at 4.210.000 tons. The combined Maine and Hudson River j'ield, enormous as it may seem, is estimated at only about half the commercial product of natural ice in the I'nited States; but even if this be not too low for tho total, it should be lemenibered that, in the aggre- gate, the additional harvest for private purposes is immense. HAnvESTiN'C Ice is a comparatively simple operation, or series of operations, the main fea- tures of which are as follows: The snow, if any. Iving on the ice is removed by scrapers. In case there is an upper layer of snow ice. it is loosened by field planes and then removed. Markers are next used to outline the blocks, which are followed by plows, which cut the grooves still deeper. The scrapers, planes, mark- ers, and plows are drawn by horses or mules. The parallel grooves, it should be understood, are