with fresh soil and water until there is a sufficient body in the recess. On one side, but as near to the recess as possible, the ground is made smooth, and dug out about cighteen inches or two feet deep into a hollow square; and the soil now becomes paste, and being thereby sufficiently washed, purified, and fluid, troughs are placed from the recess to this hollow ground, and it is ladled out with scoops or shovels into the troughs, carefully leaving the sediment at the bottom of the recess to be afterwards thrown out on the sides of it, together with stones, bones, &c. Over this hollow square or pit the fluid soil diffuses itself, where it settles of an equal thickness, and remains until wanted for use, the superfluous water being either evaporated or drained from it, by its being exposed for a certain length of time in so thin a body. When they have got a sufficient quantity of washed earth in this pit, another is made alongside of it, and so they proceed until they have got as much thus prepared as they are likely to want during the season.

The clamps for burning these better sort of bricks are individually the same with the others, but greater care is taken in not overheating the kiln, but in causing it to burn moderately, as equably and as diffusively at the same time as possible.

In the country, bricks are always burnt in kilns, whereby less waste arises, less fuel is consumed, and the bricks are sooner burnt. The bricks are first set or placed in it, and then the kiln being covered with pieces of bricks or tiles, they put in some wood to dry them with a gentle fire and this they continue until the bricks are pretty dry, which takes up two or three days, which is known by the smoke turning from a darkish colour to a transparent smoke; they then leave off putting in wood, and proceed to make ready for burning, which is performed by putting in brush, furze, spray, heath, brake, or fern fag

gots, according to the scarcity or plenty of some of those articles in the neighbourhood. But before they put in any faggots they dam up the mouth or mouths of the kiln with pieces of bricks, which is called in some places shinlog, piled one upon another, and close it up with wet brick earth.

The shinlog they make so high that there is but just room above it to thrust in a faggot; they then proceed to put in more faggots, till the kiln and its arches look white, and the fire appears at the top of the kiln; upon which they slacken the fire for an hour, and let all cool by degress. This they continue to do alternately, heatening and slackening till the bricks be thoroughly burnt, which is usually effected in forty-eight hours. One of these kilns will burn twenty thousand bricks, and is usually thirteen feet long, by ten feet six inches in depth, and the height about twelve feet. The walls are carried up something out of the perpendicular at top, and inclining towards each other, so that the area at the top is not more than one hundred and fourteen square feet; the thickness of the walls are one foot two inches.

The bricks are set on flat arches, having holes left in them something like lattice work.

Goldham observes that bricks will have double the strength if, after one burning, they be steeped in water and burnt afresh.*

As every man who has occasion to use bricks, whether on his own estate, or on that of his landlord, cannot but be sensible of the great value of a perfectly dry house; and as I think I have shewn that it is impossible a house can be dry if bricks are used which are insufficiently burnt, such as the place bricks I have before described, he will do well to consider whether it will not be more advantageous to him in the end, to make use of no other than the

* Common earthen ware, can be converted into stone ware, by reburning. T. C.

very best hard sound bricks, be the colour of them what they may, and be the cost what it will. Such bricks are easily known by their sound, and by their striking fire with steel. It will be found that, besides the comfort and firmness of the building, they will be cheaper than place bricks, together with the expense of battening the walls.

In the interior of the country tiles are almost uniformly used for roofs of houses, and in some instances on barns; but between Dorking and Horsham a heavy but very durable sort of slate stone is used. Nearer London either Welch or Westmoreland prevail. As there are many persons who give the preference to tiles, it may not be amiss to know the result of a curious experiment on that subject as related by the Bishop of Llandaff.

"That sort of slate, other circumstances being the same, is esteemed the best which imbibes the least water; for the imbibed water not only increases the weight of the covering, but in frosty weather, being converted into ice it swells and shivers the slate. This effect of frost is very sensible in tiled houses, but it is scarcely felt in slated ones; for good slate imbibes but little water; and when tiles are well glazed they are rendered, in some measure, with respect to this point, similar to slate. I took a piece of Westmoreland slate, and a piece of common tile, and weighed each of them carefully; the surface of each was about thirty square inches; both the pieces were immersed in water for ten minutes, and then taken out and weigh ed as soon as they had ceased to drip; the tile had imbibed above a seventh part of its weight of water; and the slate had not imbibed a two-hundredth part of its weight; indeed the wetting of the slate was merely superficial. I placed both the wet pieces before the fire; in a quarter of an hour the slate was become quite dry, and of the same weight it had before it was put into the water; but the tile had lost only about twelve grains of the water it

had imbibed, which was, as near as could be expected, the very same quantity which had been spread over its surface; for it was the quantity which had been imbibed by the slate, the surface of which was equal to that of the tile; the tile was left to dry in a room heated to sixty degrees, and it did not lose all the water it had imbibed in less than six days."

The finest sort of blue slate is sold at Kendal, for 3s. 6d. per load, which comes to 17. 15s. per ton, the load weighing two hundred weight. The coarsest may be had for 2s. 4d. a load, or 17. 3s. 4d. per ton. Thirteen loads of the finest sort will cover forty-two square yards of roof, and eighteen loads of the coarsest will cover the same space; so that there is half a ton less weight put upon forty-two square yards of roof when the finest slate is used than if it was covered with the coarsest kind, and the difference of the expense of the material is only 3s. 6d. To balance in some measure the advantage arising from the fightness of the finest slate, it must be remarked that it owes its lightness, not so much to any diversity in the component parts of the stone from which it is split, as to the thinness to which the workmen reduce it; and it is not able to resist violent winds so well as that which is heavier.

A common Cambridge tile weighed thirty-seven oun. ces: they use at a medium seven hundred tiles for covering one hundred square feet, or about two and a half tons of tile to forty-two square yards. Hence, without including the weight of what is used in lapping over, &c. when a building is covered with copper or lead, it will be șeen that forty-two square yards of building will be covered by

From the foregoing statement it is evident, that we are obliged to make our plates and rafters of the roof so much stouter and heavier than there is any occasion to do for slates, even the coarser sort; and consequently this increased strength in the timber must add to the expense of the roof, supposing that the same thickness of wall be sufficient."

Brick-Making.-I add a few remarks, the result of my own observation, which may furnish some notions of the value of brick-earth.

When my father died about 1789, he owned forty acres of land at Kentish town, then two miles from the turnpike of Tottenham Court Road, London. It is now built over. He had let out four acres of that land containing brick earth, at a price then considered greatly too cheap viz. one hundred pound sterling per acre for the brick earth: the brick-maker paying 51. sterling per acre for all the rest of the field that he occupied in brick-making; and being bound to fill up the holes or excavations from whence the brick earth was taken, level with the rest of the field, within one twelve month after the brick earth was exhausted. The rubbish for this purpose was usually procured from old buildings pulled down and repaired in London, brought as back loading.

The bricks made there, were place bricks and gray stocks. The place bricks being the outside bricks of the kiln, inferior, ill-burnt, soft, and used for the inside of walls. The grey stocks, being the bricks used about London, for common front-work. The colour a reddish brown.

Malm-Stocks, used for arches, were made partly near Brompton, and partly in Norfolk, of a finer kind of clay previously washed to separate the large particles of stone