(1) Build round a brick well, with a small grating for drain at bottom for the escape of water from melted ice. Cover the bottom with a thick layer of good wheat straw. Pack the ice in layers of ice and straw. Fix a wooden cover to the well. (2) Fire-brick, from its feeble conducting power, is the best material to line an ice-house with. The house is generally made circular, and larger at the top than at the bottom, where a drain should be provided to run off any water that may accumulate. As small a surface of ice as possible should be exposed to the atmosphere, therefore each piece of ice should be dipped in water before stowing away, which, by the subsequent freezing of the pieces into one mass, will remain unmelted for a long time. (3) Make a frame-house the requisite size, with its floor at least the thickness of the bottom scantling from the ground, thus leaving space for drainage and a roof to shed off the water. The boards of the wall should be closely joined to exclude air. Then build up the blocks of ice, cut in the coldest weather, as solid as possible, leaving 6 in. all round between them and the board walls; fill up all interstices between the blocks with broken ice, and in a very cold day or night pour water over the whole, so that it may freeze into a solid block; shut it up till wanted, only leaving a few small holes for ventilation under the roof, which should be 6 in. above the top of the ice. It is not dry heat or sunshine that is the worst enemy of ice, but water and damp air. If all the drainage is carried promptly off below, and the damp vapour generated by the ice is allowed to escape above, the column of cold air between the sides of the close ice-house and the cube of ice will protect it much better than it is protected in underground ice-houses, which can neither be drained nor ventilated; sawdust also will get damp, in which case it is much worse than nothing. [Illustration: 65. Ice-house.]