764 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from the Spanish word adobes * In 1873 I visited the original 

 church dedicated to St. Francis, which gave its name to the now 

 well-known town in California this church was constructed with 

 "dobies." Mud houses were not uncommon in England in the 

 past, and they are yet known in Devonshire, where the stuff they 

 are constructed with is called " cob." I am under the impression 

 that the importance of mud in connection with building has 

 hitherto been overlooked. 



Once begun, the progress of mud architecture would be con- 

 siderable. Those who began their architectural style with 

 branches of trees could not have made any advance until some 

 kind of implement was invented by means of which the wood 

 could be cut and fashioned ; and the " stone age," when stone tools 

 came into use, is a comparatively late one in man's history. The 

 mud builder, on the contrary, required no tools ; his hands were 

 sufficient for every purpose. He may have been content at first 

 with an inclosure formed by four walls. A covering of grass or 

 reeds would soon suggest itself ; this, although rude and primitive, 

 would be the first complete human habitation. But, more than 

 that, it would be the beginning of the " house " the " home," 

 which, from the relations and associations it produced, must have 

 been one of the most important steps in the history of early civil- 

 ization. 



The great antiquity of the use of mud as a building material 

 can be established from a number of references to history. In 

 Persia, at least, we have traces of it. Firdusi, in the Shah Namah, 

 relates how Jemshid, now known as a mythical personage, intro- 

 duced a better civilization among the people ; among the improve- 

 ments it is told how " he taught the unholy demon train to mingle 

 water and clay, with which, formed into bricks, the walls were 

 built, and then high turrets, towers, and balconies, and roofs, to 

 keep out rain, and cold, and sunshine." It is naturally inferred 

 that the bricks made by the children of Israel in Egypt were sun- 

 dried from the use of the straw in them. The making of bricks 

 is often represented in the sculptures of Egypt. 



The first use or invention of mud for building was ascribed to 

 mythical personages, thus attributing to it a kind of divine origin. 



I shall now give a few details of the manner of building in 

 mud, most of which are derived from what I saw in Persia. Many 

 of the methods I saw there I have since found are also practiced 

 in other parts of the world. 



It was pointed out to me that, in the larger towns, on entering 

 a house, you have often to descend from the level of the street to 



* Adobes, or dobies, is probably a variant of the Arabic tob or toob, allied again to the 

 Coptic tobi, which was also the Egyptian word for brick. 



