Carrying capacity.. Cost..... Consuming, per 24 hours, 28,000 bushels of coal. In addition to the above there were eight boats built, but not yet registered, amounting to 3,500 tons, and costing... 25,000 tons $1,255,338 300,000 1,555,338 Steam engines, (exclusive of those placed in boats here,) sugar and cotton mills, &c....... 500,000 The coinage of France, the United States, Great Britain, and Russia, for the last two years, was as follows: The coinage of gold has taken the place of silver almost altogether, except in the United States, where the new coinage act has operated effectively since 1852. The aggregate coinage of the four countries, during seven years, has been as follows: Total coinage of gold and silver in Great Britain, France, the United States, and Russia, for the last seven years-1848 to 1854, both inclusive: In the three years ending with 1850, silver was 40 per cent. of the whole coinage; in the four years ending with 1854 it was only 9 per cent. of the coinage in the above four countries. In 1850 Belgium stopped coining gold, and in 1853 Holland ceased to coin that metal. In Austria, where the currency is paper really, and silver legally, that metal has been coined as usually, and the material has been furnished from France, where it has been supplanted by gold. Including all the above countries, with Prussia, the coinage has been, in seven years, $1,097,584,300, of which about 15 per cent. has been silver. The production of that metal is now greater. A document has been published in Mexico, under the title of "Foreign Commerce of Mexico since the Conquest," which contains interesting statistics concerning the amount of gold and silver yielded by the mines of that country. The entire worth of gold and silver stamped by the different mints of Mexico from 1524 to 1852, together with manufactures from the precious metals, amounts to the sum of $3,562,205,000, viz: Silver coined in the city of Mexico.... Gold coined in the city of Mexico..... Total. Silver coined in other Mexican towns... Total.... Gold and silver manufactures Grand total.... .$2,248,165,000 111,806,000 2,359,971,000 359,621,000 15,113,000 374,734,000 827,500,000 3,562,205,000 The whole of this sum, with the exception of about $100,000,000, has been, it is supposed, exported. In the year 1690 the amount of silver coined in the city of Mexico was $5,286,000; in the following year it was $6,214,000. From 1691 until 1700, the quantity decreased until it amounted to only $3,379,000. After the latter year it steadily rose until it reached, in 1809, its highest point, viz: $24,708,000. In 1810, only $17,951,000 were coined; in 1811, but $8,956,000, and so on till 1837, when but $516,000 of silver were issued by the Mexican mint. In 1838, $1,089,000 were coined, and the quantity again began to increase. In 1852, it amounted to $2,770,000. ICE-HOW MUCH OF IT IS USED AND WHERE IT COMES FROM. Ice is an American institution-the use of it an American luxury-the abuse of it an American failing. As in the matter of luxuries, as in goverment, we are democratic and popular, the great mass of people moving, living, and having a being in America, can and do enjoy those creature comforts of existence daily, which are, in European nations, the Sabbath wonder of the humbler domestic circles. Very often that Sabbath does not come once a week for large portions of the people in Ireland, Scotland, parts of France, Germany, Italy, England, and, in fact, all over the European continent. The use of ice is esteemed a rare blessing there, and like all good things beyond the water, is adopted by the aristocracies. Dietetically, the poorer, and even middle classes, know nothing of ice. It is confined to the wine cellars of the rich, and the cooling pantries of first class confectioneries. The climate in some portions of the countries specified does not render it an actual necessity, but at certain periods of the year, in almost all of them, the temperature does not vary much from that in New York, with the difference that our heat is more continuous, In America the use of ice is as widely extended among the people as the heat is, and with a very trifling individual cost. We use it for seven or eight months of the year-all the year in the south; and even in New York there are numbers of families who ice their Croton throughout the winter. In this latter particular, and in the too free and careless use of it in the hottest days of summer, the abuse of the luxury consists. It is considered by physicians as a tonic; but an excess, as in the use of intoxicating liquors, will, in all probability, produce diarrhoea. Ice is the most tolerated equalizer of the day, bringing within the benefits of its mission every type of liquor imbibed, assuaging the tongues of oratorical politicians of all classes, and sending a judicious temperature through the diaphram of every excited individual who breathes in our midst. From the epicurean loiterer who enjoys his iced champagne and trout over Lake Saratoga, to Prof. Water Cure who, though he never gets "three sheets in the wind," constantly gets more than that number in water; from Hon. "Brandy Smash" to the dispenser of root beer and soda, with "every variety of choice syrups;" from the steam factories of ice cream to the cent-a-class hand manufactories on the pathways and pavements in and about the Park, all are enlivened, cheered and actuated by ice. In workshops, composing rooms, counting houses, workmen, printers, clerks, club to have their daily supply of ice. Every office, nook or cranny, illuminated by a human face, is also cooled by the presence of his crystal friend. It is as good as oil to the wheel. It sets the whole human machinery in pleasant action, turns the wheels of commerce, and propels the energetic business engine. In every house almost there is a vein of ice, begining with the blocks in the cellar and going through the refrigerators and filters on every story to the attic. While the extended use of ice is paramount to all, few, while imbibing their glass of iced water, the cost of which is entirely too fractional to calculate, think of the value or the capital invested in dispensing it. In this respect it resembles the daily paper, which is furnished every morning for two cents, and in the perfection of which hundreds of dollars, and great mental and physical activity and energy are daily expended. To get one of the minor items in the paper, as the little piece of ice in the glass, hundreds of miles have been travelled perhaps, and a great expense incurred. The statistics of ice are exceedingly interesting, and illustrate the go-ahead principle and enterprise which characterize every branch of our commercial tree. It is just fifty years since the idea of dispensing ice to southern latitudes entered the brain of a Boston merchant, Mr. Tudor. It was a thoroughly worthy notion of a solid man of that City of Notions. For twenty years, considerable disappointment, with various success, attended his efforts, but ultimately his persistency and activity furnished the southern States and the West Indies with the frozen delicacy, and a lucrative business opened up. In 1834 the East Indies and Brazil became his business clients. Other large houses engaged in the ice-farming in Massachusetts and New York,. and at present the value of the ice farms of those States fully equals, if it does not exceed, the value of the rice crop of Georgia. Boston chiefly supplies the southern ports with ice, and the increase of the trade in that city may be seen from these facts. In 1832 the whole amount shipped from port was 4,352 tons. In 1845 there were 48,422 tons exported; in 1853, 100,000 tons; and in 1854, 156,540 tons. It is stated that "the railroads receive some $90,000 for transporting ice, and those who bear it over the sea from $400,000 to $500,000." In Hunt's Merchants' Magazine for the present month, there are a mass of very interesting statistics on the ice trade, from which we compile the tables which we shall present to our readers. Boston finds favorable markets in Havana, Rio Janeiro, Callao, Demerara, St. Thomas, and Peru. Its best customers, however, are the southern States of the Union and the East Indies. Boston sent last year Tons. To southern States.......... 110,000 | To England............ To other places named above.. 31,361 In the ice-houses in the vicinity of Boston there were 300,000 tons stored last year. In the exportation of the amounts given above, there were 520 vessels engaged, the heaviest tonnage in the Boston trade being in the ice business. In New York, nearly the entire crop of ice is used at home. It is gathered at the following places, and in the annexed proportions: Tons. Tons. 15,000 12,000 10,000 285,000 Besides this, for the general home market, the following amounts are secured and laid up in the annexed towns on the Hudson for their own use: Central and western New York are supplied from Onondaga Lake. The whole amount secured in New York may be estimated at about 340,000 tons, of which only about 20,000 are exported. The value of this crop is fully three-fourths of a million dollars annually, the lowest price being $2 per ton-large quantities being sold at $2 50 and $3. The western markets-Cincinnati, Chicago, &c.—are supplied from the great lakes, and the markets on the Mississippi river principally from the town of Peru, in Illinois. In Boston there are between two thousand and three |