The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-06 00:00:00

COURT CIRCULAR.

A change has taken place in the intention which
we announced respecting the Lying in State of the
remains of her Royal Highness the Princess Sophia
Matilda, and we understand that the ceremony will
now take place at the Ranger's House, at Blackheath,
on Monday next, the 9th instant, from twelve to four
o'clock.

WINDSOR, THURSDAY.—The Queen and Prince
Albert walked for some time in the pleasure grounds
adjoining the Castle this morning.
The Prince of Wales, Prince Alfred, the Princess
Royal, and the Princess Alice, were taken for air-
ings in the forenoon on the Terrace and pleasure-
grounds around the Castle.
Her Royal highness the Duchess of Kent visited
her Majesty and. the Duchess of Saxe Coburg and
Gotha to day.
Mr. D. IS.lacnee had the honour of submitting to the
Queen, in the presence of his Royal Highness Prince
Albert, the Duke and Duchess of Saxe Coburg, and
the Duke Ernest of Wurtemburgh, the portrait of
her Majesty, which he has been commissioned to paint
for the Municipal-hall at Glasgow, by the Lord
Provost and Magistrates of that city.
His Royal Highness Prince Albert was pleased, on
the part of her Majesty and himself, to express his
entire satisfaction at the manner in which Mr. M. had.
fulfilled the commission entrusted to him.

His Excellency M. Dedel transacted business on
Tuesday at the Foreign-office, and embarked the
following morning for Rotterdam.
Mr. Ashbel Smith, Chargé de Affaires of Texas,
had an interview with the Earl of Aberdeen on the
Ist inst., and has since left town for Liverpool, en route
to Texa 4.

The Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England had
a meeting yesterday afternoon at the office in White-
hall-place. There were present the Bishop of Llan-
datr, the Bishop of Ripon, the Bishop of Salisbury,
and the Dean of Westminster.

The Marquis of Bristol had an interview with the
Earl of Dalhousie yesterday, at the office of the Board
of Trade.

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council sat
yesterday, an•i resumed the appeal from the Preroga-
tive Court, " Jones v. Godrich." Dr. Haggard was
heard in support of the appeal.

DEPARTURE OF THE COURT

FOR CLAREMONT.

WINDSOR, THURSDAY.—Her Majesty and his Royal
Highness Prince Albert, accompanied by their Royal
Highnesses the Reigning Duke and Duchess of Saxe
Coburg and Gotha, and the Duke Ernest of Wurtern-
berg, will take their departure from the Castle on
Saturday, for Claremont, where the Court will remain
until after the funeral of her late Royal Highness the
Princess Sophia of Gloucester, which will take place on
Tuesday next.

According to present arrangements, the Court wit
leave Claremont for Windsor oa Wednesday.

THE LATE DR. THORN.

We have received several communications from Eng-
lish residents at Calais, complaining bitterly of the con-
duct of the English authorities there in relation to the
late unfortunate murder of Dr. Thorn. They consider

that their interests have been neglected by the British
Consul, and they attribute in a great measure the
acquittal of M. Sallior to a memorial got up under
his auspices, and signed by him and by twenty-two
of the English residents in Calais. M. Martinez, the
advocate of M. Sallior, in putting this memorial in
evidence, said that those who signed it represented
the wealth and respectability of the English residents

in Calais. The great body of the English residents
protest against this assumption. This memorial was
got up in secret—there was no public meeting called
on the occasion—it was privately hawked about for
signatures—and only twenty-two, out of upwards of
a thousand English residents in Calais and its neigh.
bourhood, attached their names to this certificate of
character for M. Sallior. The second name attached
to this memorial is that of the clergyman ; and of ail

the others, the only known name is that of Mr. Morton
Dyer, the ex-Middlesex magistrate. The rest of the
twenty-two are unknown to fame. The English
residents, however, do full justice to the exertions of
the Procureur du Roi, whose conclusions appear to have
been unanswerable. The deceased and M. Sallior were
observed standing closo together in the vestibule of
the Hotel de Ville. Dr. Thorn was seen to fall by
the sentinel, who picked him up and laid him on a
table, while Sallior went into his office. The sentinel
was loosening Dr. Thorn's cravat when Sallior entered
the vestibule and said, "My dear friend is dead—
send for a doctor." The defence of Sallior was that
he was so intoxicated, that he recollected nothing—
that
he knew nothing of what had occurred. " That
is impossible," replied the Procureur du Roi, " for
while the sentinel thought he was only intoxicated,
you said that he was dead. You were the first to
desire that a doctor should be sent fur." The Prefect
of the department, too, exerted himself to the
utmost in behalf of M. Sallior. This was but
natural, for if, as has been stated, M. Sallior is
an agent of the secret police, he might,
had he been condemned, have made revelations which
would have been anything but agreeable to the Go-
vernment; and as a proof of the extent to which the
infamous spy system is carried in France, we may
state that the English residents have deputed a mem-
ber of their body to bring their complaints personally
to this country, because they are convinced that any
letters which they might write on the subject would
he stopped at the French Post. office. The reflecting
part of the French community appear to be as dissa-
tisfied with the verdict of the St. Omer jury as the
great majority of the English residents. With the
feelings of the French, however, we have nothing to
do, but the conduct of the English Consul in this
affair certainly demands a searching inquiry.

THE ICE TRADE IN INDIA.
(From the Madras Atheneum.)
Ice has become a great article of export in America-
-60,000 tons are annually sent from Boston to southern
parts, the East and West Indies, &c. The ice-houses
near the lakes and ponds are immense wooden buildings.
holding 10,000 to 20,000 tons each ; some of them,
indeed, cover half an acre of ground. They are built
with double walls—that is, with an inner wall round,
two feet from the outer one ; and the space between is
filled with sawdust—a non-conductor, !making a solid
wall, impervious to heat and air, and of ten feet in thick-
ness. The machines employed for cutting the ice are
very beautiful, and the work is done by men and horses
in the following manner :—The ice that is intended to
be cut is kept clear of snow, as soon as it is sufficiently
thick to bear the weight of the men and horses to be
employed, which it will do at six inches ; and the snow
is kept scraped from it until it is thick enough to cut.
A piece of ice is cleared, of two acres in extent, which,
at a foot thick, will give about 2,000 tons. By keeping
the snow off it freezes thicker, as the frost is freely
allowed to penetrate. When the time of cutting arrives
the men commence upon one of these pieces by getting
a straimht line through the centre each way. A small
hand-plough is pushed along the line until the groove is
about a quarter of an ii eh in width and three inches
deep, when they commence with the " marker"—an
implement drawn by two horses—which makes two new
grooves parallel with the first, twenty-one inches, the
gauge remaining in the first groove. It is then shifted
to the outside groove, and makes two more. The same
operations go on, in parallel rectangular lines, until the
ice is all marked out into squares of twentj-one inches.
In the meanwhile, the plough is following in these
grooves, drawn by a single horse, a man leading it; and
he cuts up the ice to a depth of six inches. The outer
blocks are thou sawn out, and iron bars are used on
splitting them. These bars are like a spade, of a wedge
form. In dropping them into the grooves the ice splits
off, and a very slight blow is sufficient to separate theta;
and they split easy or hard, according to the weather in
a very cold day. Ice is very brittle in keen frost; in
comparatively softer weather it is more ductile and re-
sistible. Platforms, or low tables, are placed near the
opening made in the ice, with an iron slide reaching
from them into the water; and a man stands on each
side with an ice-hook, very much like a boat-hook, but
made of steel, with fine sharp points. With these the ice
is hooked with a jerk that throws it on the platform on
the sides, which are of the same height. On a cold day
everything becomes covered with ice, and the blocks are
each sent spinning along, although they weigh two cwt.,
as if they weighed only one pound. The slides are
large lattice-work platforms to allow the ice to drain,
and three tons can thus be easily run in one of them by
one horse. It is then carried to the ice-houses, discharged
upon a plat form in front of the doors, and hoisted into the
building by a horse. 40 men and 12 horses will cut and
stow away 400 tons a-day. If the weather be favour-
able, 100 men are sometimes employed at once ; and in
three weeks the ice crop—about 200,000 tons—is se-
cured. Some winters it is very difficult to secure it, as
rain or thaw may come that will destroy the labour of
weeks, and render the ice unfit for market ; and then it
may snow and rain upon that before those employed
have time to clear it off ' • and if the latter freezes, the
result is snow ice, which is of no value, and has to be
planed off. The operation of planing proceeds in nearly
the same manner as that of cutting. A plane guaged to
run in the grooves made by the " marker," and which
will shave the ice to a depth of three inches at one cut,
is drawn by a horse, until the whole piece is regularly
planed over. The chips are then scraped off. If the ice
is not then clear, the work is continued until the pure
ice is reached, and a few nights of hard frost will make
it as thick below—inch for inch—as what has been taken
off above. The ice is transported on railways. Each
ice-house has a branch railway from the main line, and
it is conveyed in properly constructed box-waggons to
Bostoe—a distance of (as the locality may be) 10 to 18
miles. The tools, machinery, &c., employed, and the
building the houses, and constructing and keeping up the
railroads, &c., are very expensive ; yet the facilities are
such, through good management, that ice can be fur-
nished at a very trifling cost per pound ; and a failure
of the ice crop in America would be a great calamity.

The Lambing season has commenced most favour-
ably in the Isle of Wight. This fine dry, open weather
heA forwarded all the work of the farm. The young
wheats never looked better at this seam.