[410] [The application of ice to the purposes of confectionary, has, within the last few years, become much more extensive; encouraged, no doubt, by the facility with which it is now procurable at all seasons of the year, and in any quantity. Imitations of peaches, nectarines, apricots, and other fruits, are now produced in ice paste in such perfection, as at first sight to deceive the most practised eye; and such elegances are no longer confined to the tables of the wealthy.] [411] Instruction pour les Jardins. Paris, 1730, 4to, i. p. 263. The author says that ice in summer is indeed useful; but, as a gardener, he wishes that frost could be prevented; and that ice might be imported from the North, as olives and oranges are from the South. Some years ago, as no ice could be procured on account of the great mildness of the preceding winter, the merchants at Hamburg sent a ship to Greenland for a load of it, by which they acquired considerable profit. [412] For the above account of the mode of collecting the ice at Wenham Lake, we are indebted to the ‘Illustrated London News’ for May 17, 1845. HYDROMETER. This instrument, called in Latin _hydrometrum_, _hygroscopium_, _hygrobaroscopium_, _hydroscopium_, _areometrum_, and _baryllion_, serves to determine the weight or specific gravity of different fluid masses, by the depth to which it sinks in them. The laws respecting the comparative specific gravity of fluids and solid bodies immersed in them were discovered by Archimedes, when he tried the well-known experiment, by order of Hiero king of Sicily, to find the content of a golden crown, made for that sovereign. Upon these is founded the construction of the hydrometer; and it is not improbable that Archimedes, who was killed in the year 212 before the Christian æra, was the inventor of it, though no proofs to warrant this conjecture are to be found in the writings of that great man, or in those of any other author.