Brice
ST., Bishop of Tours in the beginning of the 5th century, is commemorated as a confessor. St. Brice's Day, in 1002 (in the reign of Ethelred II.), is notorious in old English history BRICK and baked in a kiln. The word is also applied to the block in its previous condition as a molded plastic mass, and as a dried block in which the water hygrometrically combined with the clay is driven off. When this condition is accepted as a finality, the block so dried is an adobe. The burning of the previously dried brick drives off the chemically combined water, and forever changes the character of the mass. An adobe may become resaturated with water, and resume its plasticity; a brick may become rotten and disintegrated, but not plastic. There are two principal kinds of brick, building brick and fire brick, and their composition depends upon the use to which they are put; a good building brick will contain about 50 per cent. silica, 25 per cent. alumina and oxide of iron, 3 per cent. carbonate of lime, 1 per cent. carbonate of magnesium, and 21 per cent. of water and other constituents; while a fire brick will contain about 59 per cent. silica, 35 per cent. alumnia, 3 per cent. of oxide of iron, and only 3 per cent. of carbonate of lime, carbonate of Magnesia, and water, combined. Fire brick is used to line furnaces, crucibles, and in other places where a high heat is maintained; and must contain as little fusible matter as possible. Some of the best clays in the world for brick making are found in New Jersey, at Perth Amboy, Woodbridge, and Trenton, and one of the largest brick making establishments in the world is situated at Haverstraw, N. Y.
Building bricks come under various names according to the use to which they are put, or the position they occupy in a building. Some of these are: Air brick is an iron grating the size of a brick, or a perforated brick, let into a wall to allow the passage of air. Arch brick usually means the hard burned, partially vitrified brick from the arches of the brick clamp in which the fire is made and maintained. A brick made voussoir shaped is known as a compass brick. A capping brick is one for the upper course of a wall; clinker, a brick from an arch of the clamp, so named from the sharp, glassy sound when struck; a coping brick, one for a coping course on a wall; feather edged vaults, niches, etc.; fire brick, made of intractable material, so as to resist fusion in furnaces and kilns; hollow for a great massacre of the Danes. It brick, brick, of prismatic form, for arches, was believed that it was a concerted attempt to exterminate all the Danes in England; but, failing of its bloody pose, it led to reprisals by the Danish King Sweyn.