“I have just received your letter of the 19th ult. The uncommon cold of the last winter, and the unusual heat of the present summer, appear, in some degree, to have extended to you. Individually, I am not sorry to have the opportunity of experiencing, in the course of the year I have passed in America, a range of temperature beyond even the ordinary limits of the country. The great and sudden changes, however, continue to strike me more than even extremes of cold and heat, so much beyond those we experience in England. After a week of the hottest weather they have had here this summer, (the other morning the thermometer was currently reported, and I believe correctly, to be 98° of Fahrenheit in the shade,) thin clothes of every description have disappeared; and last night, when I sat down to write to you, I found it too cold to proceed. The oppressive heat of the summer here, and in the United States, is alleviated, in some degree, by the liberal use of ice. We see it in every form, and use it with the utmost profusion. The butter regularly comes to table with a fine thick transparent piece of ice upon it; large pieces are generally floating in the water jugs at dinner, or in your chambers; and it is often handed round on plates, in small pieces, to be used at dinner. The plan of preserving ice in this country, and the United States, is much more simple than with us, and, I have no doubt, more judicious, as, notwithstanding the superior heat of the climate, it is so much more cheap and plentiful. Almost every farmer has his ice-house.