392 THE GEOLOGY OF MINNESOTA. 



[Brick. 



Kleven. These all make what is known as "slop brick'', i. e. they handle 

 and dry them after mixing in water, without the use of sand. The latter 

 method (with sand) is much quicker and pleasanter, but in the use of the 

 brick there is not much choice between the methods. At Broughton's the 

 brick are red. The clay used, which is about five feet below the surface, is 

 fine and of a yellowish ashy color. It is underlain by gravel. The clay 

 itself locally passes into a sand that looks like "the bluff". At other places 

 it is a common, fine clay-loam, with a few gravel-stones. There is but little 

 deleterious to the brick, in the clay, although some of the brick are, on 

 fractured surfaces, somewhat spotted with poor mixing, and with masses 

 of what appear like concretions. The clay itself is apparently massive, 

 but it is really indistinctly bedded, rarely showing a horizontal or oblique, 

 thin layer of yellow sand. Oak wood costs from five to six dollars per cord. 

 The yard of Mr. Cook also furnishes red brick. He uses the same stratum 

 of fine clay overlain by the same yellowish sandy clay or loam. The clay 

 here shows to better advantage and is plainly bedded. It contains sticks, 

 the largest observed being a little over half an inch in diameter. These 

 sticks are plainly endogenous in cellular structure, but have a bark. They 

 are not oxidized so as to be brittle, but are flexible stiil, with small branches 

 like rootlets hanging to them. It is uncertain whether they belong to the 

 deposit, or are the roots of vegetation that grew on the surface since the 

 drift. There are no boulders of any size in the drift just here; but a few 

 granitoid gravel stones. The aspect generally indicates that this clay has 

 a local character largely, but no outcropping beds can be found in the neigh- 

 borhood. Mr. Cook has made in one year 250,000 brick. The yard has been 

 running twelve years. Brick here sell for $1.30 per hundred, as they come 

 from the kiln, or $10.25 per thousand. Hard brick from the arch sell at 







$1.50 per hundred. The brick here seem to show a little more lime, but 

 they are well made and well burned. 



About a quarter of a mile south of Albert Lea, in the west edge of sec. 

 16 of that township, bricks have been made by Rusfeldt and Kleven 

 since 1878. For several years previous to 1880, they made 500,000 to 

 700,000 yearly, selling at $7.00 per M. In the spring of 1880 they were 

 putting in brick-making machinery, and expected to produce 1,500.000 

 bricks that year. The clay forms a ridge fifty or sixty rods long from north- 



