333 



BREZILIX. 



BRICKS. 



334, 



on small beer (to which rates the duties in England had been advanced 

 in 1692), and 2s. per barrel on " twopenny ale." In 1697 the rates 

 were increased in England and Scotland to 4. 9d. on strong beer and 

 Is. 3d. on small beer. A further advance in 1710 carried the rates to 

 5s. and 1. 4rf. In 1761 the duties were fixed at 8. per barrel on 

 strong, Ss. on table beer, Is. 4d. on small beer, and 3s. id. on twopenny 

 ale. In 1802 the distinctions of small beer in England and Scotland, 

 and of twopenny ale in the latter country, were no longer made, and 

 the rates of duty were fixed at 10s. per barrel on strong, and 2s. per 

 barrel on table beer, at which they were continued until October 1830, 

 when the duty on all kinds of beer was wholly repealed. In July 1823, 

 the legislature had sanctioned the sale of a quality of beer between the 

 two kinds last mentioned, to which the appropriate name of " inter- 

 mediate " beer was given, and upon this kind a duty of 5s. per barrel 

 was payable, until 1830. The above-named rates were in addition to 

 the duties charged in each division of the kingdom upon the materials 

 of which beer is made. [Hops ; MALT.] 



An attempt was made in 1806 to impose duty upon beer made in 

 private houses ; but this measure met with so much opposition, that it 

 was abandoned by the chancellor of the exchequer, and the impost was 

 confined, as it always had been, to beer brewed for sale by public 

 brewers. 



The quantities of " strong," " table," and " small " beer charged with 

 duty in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, between the years 1786 

 and 1830, never deviated far from 8,000,000 gallons per annum, yield- 

 ing a revenue varying from 1,900,000?. to 3,500,000?., according to the 

 rates of duty charged. The duty on malt and hops is still retained, 

 but the beer duty has been repealed. Very little foreign beer or ale is 

 imported. British malt liquor is exported, but in a small ratio com- 

 pared with the home consumption. In the three years ending with 

 1858, the average annual quantities were thus presented : 



To Australia 176,000 barrels 



To the East Indies .... 133,000 

 To all other countries . . . 151,000 



460,000 



BREZILIN. [BRAZIL WOOD, COLOURING MATTER OF.] 



BRIBERY. [ELECTION.] 



BRICKS. The small building materials obtained by moulding and 

 drying, either with or without direct contact with fire, a plastic earth 

 for the purpose of supplying the place of stones are called BRICKS, and 

 their use seems to have been coeval with the earliest dawn of civilisa- 

 tion. We read, in fact, in Genesis xi. 3, and in the description of the 

 building of the tower of Babel that bricks " burnt with fire " were even 

 then known ; and from Sir O. Wilkinson's work upon the ' Manners, 

 Ac. of the Egyptians,' 1st series, ii. pp. 96-99, it is evident that the 

 art of preparing both the sun-dried and the kiln-burnt bricks was 

 familiar to that nation. There are indeed still in existence both 

 public and private buildings in Egypt erected with this material ; and 

 the recent discoveries of the ruins of Nimroud show that the As- 

 syrians also were acquainted with its use. Herodotus mentions that in 

 the construction of the walls of Babylon, bricks burnt in a furnace were 

 employed ; Xenophon also alludes to them ; and Pausanias states that 

 the walls of Mantinea were built of sun-dried bricks, if at least we may 

 judge by the statement that when Agis was besieging the town, he 

 destroyed the walls by turning the course of the river, so that it should 

 wash away the walls of " crude bricks." The Romans, however, of 

 the nations of antiquity seem to have used this class of materials the 

 most habitually ; and there are numerous and explicit allusions to the 

 processes adopted in the manufacture in Columella, Varro, Palladius, 

 Vitruvius, Pliny, Ac. Wherever there was found to be any difficulty 

 in procuring easily worked building stone, the Romans, in fact, resorted 

 to the use of brick; and they even seem to have given it a species of 

 general preference, for the majority of their great engineering works 

 were executed with bricks, even when it was possible to obtain stone 

 without any great additional outlay. The Roman bricks, however, 

 were more like tiles, in the modern acceptation of the word, than those 

 made at the present day ; and, as we shall have occasion to observe, 

 their use rendered necessary the adoption of a style of construction 

 rather different from that of ordinary modern brickwork. 



During the early part of the middle ages bricks were little used, and 

 it would even appear that it was not until about the llth and 12th 

 centuries, that their manufacture was revived in Northern Italy, and 

 in the Rhenish and Flemish provinces. From thence the use of bricks 

 seems to have spread rapidly, until about the 16th century, when it 

 almost universally superseded the use of stone, in countries even 

 wh*erein the latter material was easily and economically obtained; 

 perhaps in consequence of the absurd fiscal regulations of the times. 

 Of late years the fashion has changed, and bricks are only used when 

 there are local conditions of so imperative a nature as to render it 

 inexpedient to employ the more costly, but more beautiful material. 

 In every country, however, where fuel is cheap, and large deposits of 

 plastic clay are to .be found, bricks are almost exclusive employed, on 

 account of their economy, and of the ease with which they are laid. 

 The nature of the fuel, and still more the nature of the clay used, so 

 materially affects the dimensions, and the details of the manufacture of 

 bricks, that it will be impossible to notice all their varieties ; it is 



therefore proposed simply to describe the more general known descrip- 

 tions made for the London market, under the various heads of walling 

 bricks, paving bricks or clinkers, and fire bricks. 



Ordinary walling bricks may, for convenience sake, be considered 

 first, under the classification of "kiln-burnt" bricks, or " clamp-burnt" 

 bricks, according to the method of their burning; or they may be 

 considered under that of malms or common, bricks, according to the 

 nature of the clay which enters into their composition. The various- 

 coloured bricks, red, white, blue, and black, are obtained from clays of 

 peculiar descriptions, to which attention will incidentally be called in 

 the sequel. 



Kiln-burnt bricks are, as their name implies, those which are burnt 

 in kilns ; a method usually adopted when fuel is expensive, and the 

 clay is sufficiently stiff and strong to require to be treated like pottery 

 clay. The clays, in fact, which contain a large proportion of carbonate 

 of lime are liable to fuse in the furnace, if exposed to great heat ; and, 

 therefore, the bricks made from them require to be burnt in kilns, 

 wherein the heat may be regulated at will. The operation of kiln- 

 burning is slower also than that of clamp-burning, and for this reason 

 especially it is not resorted to in the neighbourhood of London, where 

 the demand is so enormous. The bricks which are burnt in kilns are 

 usually of a better and more uniform colour, and of a more regular 

 form than those burnt in clamps ; but they are not usually so well 

 vitrified, nor are their powers of resisting atmospheric influences by 

 any means equal to those of bricks burnt at higher temperatures. 

 Moulded bricks, tiles, and drain-pipes, and in fact, all earthenware, of 

 which it may be desired to retain the particular form impressed by 

 the moulder, are invariably burnt in kilns. 



The kilns may be either closed or open, though there can be no 

 doubt as to the superiority of the former system. The closed kilns are 

 made to receive about 24,000, or even 30,000 bricks at a time ; but 

 the dimensions usually adopted are to make the chamber for stacking 

 the bricks 10 feet wide, 20 feet long, and about 13 feet 6 inches in 

 clear of the arch. The open kilns receive from 40,000 to 50,000 bricks 

 at the same time ; and occasionally in Holland, they are even made 

 large enough to receive three millions at once. In the latter case, 

 however, the advantages of kiln-burning are entirely lost, so far at 

 least as the influence of the burning upon the quality of the goods is 

 concerned. 



Clamp-burnt bricks are usually composed of a clay which is fusible 

 with so much difficulty as to require that the fuel should even be mixed 

 in the body of the brick itself ; and it thus happens that, from the 

 intimate manner in which the heat penetrates the whole mass, the 

 bricks burnt in clamps are more thoroughly burnt, and consequently 

 are of a more durable nature, than those prepared in kilns. The 

 clamps, however (which are, in fact, only stacks of dried bricks with 

 occasional layers of fuel interspersed), are exposed to great irregularities 

 in the manner in which the combustion takes place ; and the quality of 

 the bricks varies sensibly according to the manner in which the com- 

 bustion has so taken place. Where the fire has been too powerful the 

 bricks run into a species of semi-vitrified state, and are known as 

 clinkers ; where the fire has not been powerful enough, the bricks are 

 soft and incoherent, and in this state they are known amongst the 

 London workmen under the. names of grizzles, or of place bricks. The 

 latter phrase, it must be observed, is applied also to the soft kiln-burnt 

 bricks. Clamps are usually made to consist of 600,000 bricks ; but 

 very often as many as a million are burnt in one stack ; the loss by 

 fracture, clinkering, and underburning is hardly ever less than 10 

 per cent. 



Malm bricks are those which present a warm buff colour, and a close 

 uniform gram, when pains have been taken in their manufacture. 

 They are usually made from the fine clays of the post tertiary periods, 

 in which there is a considerable quantity of the carbonate of lime 

 diffused through the mass in a highly comminuted state, or even occa- 

 sionally in chemical combination. Where this diffusion does not exist 

 naturally, it is imitated by adding chalk in the necessary proportions ; 

 and thence arises the subclassification of the natural and artificial 

 malms. Great care is required in burning all the descriptions of malm 

 bricks to exclude the ordinary atmosphere from them during the 

 operation of burning ; and on this account as well as on that of the 

 chemical nature of the clay, malms are always burnt in kilns. It is 

 also extremely important that no large masses of the carbonate of lime 

 should exist in the bricks ; for during the process of burning, the lime 

 would naturally pass into the caustic state ; and as this caustic lima 

 eventually would absorb moisture from the air, it would expand, and 

 disintegrate the body of the bricks. It has even happened that walls 

 built of bricks made from clay containing a large proportion of car- 

 bonate of lime have swelled bodily, when erected in such positions as 

 to be able to absorb moisture. The best malm bricks are made near 

 Ware, in Hertfordshire ; Erith, in Kent : the Suffolk bricks are also, 

 in fact, a species of malms, but they usually are white, from the fact 

 of their possessing an excess of the carbonate of lime in the composi- 

 tion of their clay. Indeed as the calcareous marls, from which malms 

 are made, vary in their composition so much, that the carbonate of 

 lime may be either 14 or 46 per cent, of the whole mass, the colour of 

 the bricks may vary in as distinctly marked a manner. The quantity 

 of oxide of iron present in calcareous marls also varies within a very 

 wide range ; or between 2 and 6J per cent. 



