THE USES OF ARTIFICIAL REFRIGERATION are numerous. For cooling and ventilating buildings, aiding in some lines of manufactures, and in chemical works, it has proved its usefulness. In all hot climates it is extensively employed for making ice. In breweries it is applied very extensively, and is practically indispensable. The handling of fresh meat, in the modern method, is directly dependent upon artificial refrigeration, and in no other direction are its benefits more marked or widespread. The cattle on our Western plains have become the daily food of those living at the antipodes. In ten years, from 1880 to 1891, the imports of fresh beef and mutton into Great Britain increased from 400 to nearly 3,300,000 carcasses. During the same period the exports of beef alone from the United States advanced from 50,500 tons to 101,500 tons. Not only are meats carried in refrigerator vessels from America and the antipodes to England, but within a year Australian milk has been shipped in frozen blocks in such quantities as to be retailed in the streets of London for four cents per quart. Butter, cheese, eggs, fruits and other perishable products, are likewise transported enormous distances by rail or water, without injury to the quality, and at a low cost for freight. It is also worthy of mention that refrigeration is now employed by the engineer, in substructure work in soils abounding in quicksands. A solid wall of earth is frozen and maintained in such soils, within which excavating and construction can proceed with ease and safety. That many other uses for refrigeration will be developed goes without question. The students and inventors who are engaged on the problems involved in the production of artificial cold, claim that before many years all modern houses will be supplied with a refrigerating outfit in the garret to supply cold air to any of the rooms in summer, by gravity, as hot air is carried by flues from the furnace in winter. The universal application of a practical device for this purpose, will yield a rich reward for the successful inventor. CHAPTER VIII. ICE IN TRANSPORTATION. Refrigerator Cars and Vessels--Value of Ice in Transporting and Marketing Perishable Produce--Ice and the Fisheries. On all the important lines of railroads a regular refrigerator car service is maintained, for transporting perishable goods of all kinds. Butter, poultry, eggs, cheese, fruit, fresh meat, vegetables, and other articles, are despatched by this service. The shipping of packing-house products is an important branch of this department of railroad service, and a description of it will show the general features common to all branches of the business.