C 166 1 
general they have a thin coat of plaister, and are 
painted in fresco, so as to resemble in every respect 
very beautiful stone houses. You will be surpri¬ 
sed, that not only the common farm houses, but 
most of the gentlemen’s country hoi^ses, in the 
neighborhood of Lyons, are built in this way. That 
few are under two and some of them three story 
high, and tho’ the walls are only fourteen inches 
(French measure) thick, are covered with tile roofs. 
The barns and garden walls are also built in this 
manner ; every species of earth is proper for this 
work except pure sand, or pure clay ; almost every 
admixture of one with the other in any proportions, 
answers the purpose. At Lyons the earth is gravel 
mixed with what we should call a loam^ in the pro¬ 
portion of at least one half gravel. The extreme 
cheapness of these buildings, the facility with which 
they are made, their warmth, their security against 
fires, recommend them so strongly, that I shall 
make myself complete master of the art before I 
come over, and teach it to niy countrymen ; there 
is another way of making them, that I have seen 
practised, in which mode, very handsome pillars 
may be made for piazzas, &c. A mould is made 
in strong timber of the form in which you wish 
your stone for building, in this the earth is rammed 
till it becomes as hard as marble, when it dries a 
little, it shrinks so as to come out of the mouldy 
though it is best to make the mould in two pieces, 
and confine it between strong timber, or by sinking 
it into the earth. Thus you have cut stone which 
