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A-do′be.

Adobes, or unburnt bricks, are principally in vogue in the plains of Shinar and Egypt, and in China and certain portions of North America inhabited by the Puebla Indians. If well burned, the clay forever loses its plasticity, and cannot again be reduced to a mortar. If it be merely dried, it will assume its original condition, as it came from the pug-mill. Such has lately (1871) been the experience of the Chinese in the vicinity of the Hoang-ho, whose houses of adobes are reduced to mud-heaps by the overflow of the river. Mr. Tomlinson, C. E., of London, has treated this matter more fully than any other author writing in our language, and he says: “The first action of heat is to drive off hygrometric water; the clay then becomes dry, but is not chemically changed, it does not cease to be plastic. On continuing to raise the heat, the chemically combined water is separated, and the clay undergoes a molecular change which prevents it from taking up water again except mechanically. With the loss of this chemically combined water clay ceases to be plastic.”

In the directions which have been published for building with adobes, it is recommended that they should be guarded, by some material impervious to water, from absorbing moisture from the ground, and also that the roof should be made to project not less than two feet in order to shed the water and prevent its running down the walls. These directions seem to indicate the weak point, and the experiences derived from the dry plains of Asia and Africa, and the elevated arid regions of Northern Mexico and Lower California, do not apply so well to our more humid climate.

The mold for making adobes resembles the ordinary brick-mold in having four sides and having handles at the ends, but no top or bottom. It is much larger, however, and sometimes a pair are placed in a single frame. It is placed in position on the drying-ground, filled with clay, and when the top is smoothed by a striker, the mold is carefully raised, leaving the adobe to dry for a few days, when it is turned to expose the other side. A few weeks of [16] favorable weather complete the drying. It is a cheap material and easily built up. It does not appear likely ever to become a favorite mode of building in those parts of the United States which are at present most thickly populated. It will not do to make too general a statement in a country whose climate varies between Alaska and Mexico.

1877.

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