tend to quickly drain it at all times, for no reasonable amount of pres sure can be exerted by weight upon the road surface that will tend to close or obstruct the little spaces between the various bits of straw and brush. Into these the water will drip in times of rain, and the air also will find its way thither when the drainage has ceased, to the great advantage of the road, and to the satisfaction of its builder.

TREATMENT OF EARTH ROADS.

The following extract relating to the treatment of earth roads is taken from "New Roads and Road Laws in the United States:"

What has been said in the foregoing chapters clearly demonstrates that all the important roads can be, and probably will be, macadamized or well graveled in the not distant future. This expectation should therefore govern the present treatment of roads every where; no labor or expense should be put upon them other than what is necessary to keep them usable, except such as, while it will secure their present betterment, will count also toward their ultimate improvement as hard roads. For this they will require attention (1) to their location, (2) to grading, and (3) to drainage. If the road goes over a hill, which it might go around, the labor put upon it is wasted and the sooner it is changed the better; if it is not well rounded up and surfacedrained, it should be, not only for present use but as a preliminary to macadamizing; if it is not underdrained in all wet spots, that should be the first work done; nothing, indeed, will pay better for present use than putting in good tile or stone drains, and they will count for all they cost in the future road building; they should be put in wherever the subsoil is of a nature to hold water.

Hon. W. L. Webber, chairman of the Michigan highway commission, gives this instance of the benefit of drainage in Saginaw: "In this city, a few years ago, the common council, by resolution, placed the drainage of streets under the control of the board of public works, whereupon the board of public works at once let contracts for several miles of tile drains, upon which the council promptly revoked the authority which had been given to the board, the tile drains being regarded as an improvident use of the public money. But the contracts made were carried out, and after one year's experience the council was so thoroughly satisfied of the advantage of the tile drainage in streets that since that time no street has been ordered improved without ordering tile drains in."

Mr. Webber further says: "Roadbeds should be drained in all places whether subsoil is clay or packed, so that the surface of the road will have no standing water under it to a depth of at least 3 feet, and there is no word which should be so thoroughly impressed into the minds of all connected with the making of roads as the word drainage—thorough drainage, deep drainage.”

TREATMENT OF SANDY ROADS.

The usual way of mending sandy roads is to cover the surface with clay or to mix clay with the surface sand. The Massachusetts highway commission says it is "questionable whether this method of treatment is in the long run economical." The commission estimates the average cost of doing this at 15 cents per square yard, with renewal in about five years, or 3 cents a square yard annually, and adds:

A good macadam road can be constructed for 60 cents a square yard. Taking into consideration the small amount of travel and that the road is estimated to last

twenty years, with hardly any repairs, the annual cost will be 3 cents per square yard, or the same in each case.

Other materials have been used for the more or less temporary hardening of sand roads, and some of them with marked success. For this purpose any strong fibrous substance, and especially one which holds. moisture, such as the refuse of sugar cane or sorghum, and even common straw, flax, or swamp grass will be useful. Spent tan is of some service, and wood fiber in any form is excellent. The best is the fibrous sawdust made in sawing shingles by those machines which cut into the side of the block. This has been used to some extent in portions of Wisconsin. The results of its use are described in the following letter from Mr. J. T. Kingston, postmaster at Necedah, Juneau County, Wis.:

Yours is at hand, inquiring in relation to sawdust roads. The officers of this town, Necedah, have for several years past used shingle sawdust on the principal traveled roads in the town. The land is very sandy. Sawdust is first spread on the road from 8 to 10 inches deep, and this is covered with sand to protect the road against fire lighted from pipes or cigars carelessly thrown or emptied on the roadbed. The sand also keeps the sawdust damp. The dust and sand soon become hard and packed, and the wheels of the heaviest wagons make no impression upon the surface. The roadbed appears to be almost as solid as a plank road, but is much easier for the teams. The road prepared in the above manner will remain good for four or five years and will then require renewing in some parts. How lumber sawdust would answer, I do not know.

The ordinary lumber sawdust would not be so good, of course, but if mixed with planer shavings might serve fairly well. Mr. Kingston's statement is confirmed by a letter written from an adjoining county in the same State by Mr. C. M. Simons, county clerk, of Friendship, Adams County:

Your inquiry as to the use of sawdust on sandy roads is received. We have sandy roads in this county, but use no sawdust on them. We use clay and marsh muck. Clay, we think, makes the best road when put on as it should be. Since the introduction of wide-tire wagons (4-inch tires) we have found little trouble with sandy roads. Very heavy loads are being hauled over the sandiest roads with no difficulty on 4-inch-tired wagons; and I consider the use of wide tires on wagons and buggies of far more importance than any road filling that could possibly be done in this county with the means we have at our disposal for the work.

In Juneau County some very fine roads have been made with sawdust. A road of this kind from Necedah to the Wisconsin River, a distance of about 3 miles, is a boulevard of the county and it is a pleasure to ride over it. In that county sawdust is convenient and cheap. In this county roads which have been well graded, and have trenches about 18 inches wide and 10 inches deep, filled with clay, and having about 2 inches of sand on top, just where the wheels run, have made the best lasting roads for all kinds of use, and are the very cheapest we can make. Various plans have been proposed, but no other is so good for the money as the above. Buckwheat, rye, and sorghum straw have been used with good results.

GRUBBING AND CLEARING FOR NEW ROADS IN TIMBERED REGIONS.

The chief item of cost in building a new road in a timbered country is in the grubbing or digging out the trees and stumps along the line, and this work is so costly that it is generally very imperfectly done, and as a result many years elapse before the roadbed becomes workable through the decay of the roots left in the ground.

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The usual practice is to chop or dig out the trees or stumps, leav the great mass of roots in the ground to be covered more or less perfectly with the earth taken from the ditches. It is impossible in this manner to secure any uniform wearing capacity in the road. In making roads through a forest it has been customary to cut down the timber and then grub the stumps or pull them by machinery, but a great sav ing can often be made by grubbing the standing timber, cleaning and cutting the roots to such a distance from the tree that only the smaller roots are left in the ground. This is better economy than the other practice; but the grubbing process may be greatly facilitated by the use of an apparatus such as is shown in the accompanying cut (Fig. 1).

A jack or pusher is set up against the tree and pushes it with great force in the direction in which it naturally leans. A few roots are cut on the side of the tree toward the jack, and the weight of the tree itself, with the force of the pusher, easily overturns it. A large roller is placed near the tree to receive it when it falls, and thus pry the roots out of the ground. This process is applicable of course only to forest trees and those having no tap roots.

The most recent practice, in cases where the timber has been cut off and the stumps have to be removed, is to blow them out with dynamite cartridges.

WAGON FOR DISTRIBUTING CRUSHED STONE.

Referring to a wagon box, designed and built by himself for the purpose of distributing crushed stone, Mr. F. W. Ledyard, of Cazenovia, N. Y., makes the following statements:

The cost of the wagon box, which holds 2 tons of stone, is about $25. Without any assistant or the driver leaving his seat streams of crushed stone can be poured directly into one rut or both, just in front of the rear wheels, which have broad tires, so that the metal is at once rolled in. This is done when the ruts are wet, and only then. No more stone is applied until other ruts form, and this may not be until another season. No rut, good road.

In this manner 10 inches of stone may be put on during five years, with little more cost than that of wasteful repairs. As the work goes on, ruts will cease forming or be less deep.

This is simply maintenance with comparative permanence in view, and with a stone-crusher and proper box the process is very economical. I have used hard cobbles in my crusher, and given them a commercial value, so that farmers brought them in instead of putting them in fence corners.

REPAIRS OF COUNTRY ROADS.

By SARAH COOPER HEWITT, in Harpers' Weekly.

So much has been said about the difficulty of making good country roads without involving a great outlay of money that it seems rather presuming to take a contrary view of the subject, but I think the matter has been much exaggerated, and that in any part of the country where clay, hardpan, gravel or disintegrated rock can be found it is quite easy to get excellent roads at comparatively little expense. I speak from some practical experience acquired in road-making in a very wild and hilly region of northern New Jersey, where we are accustomed to work out our taxes on 13 or more miles of public highway, and by adopting the following system we have found it easy to keep the roads in such good condition that they can be driven over at all times with speed, comfort, and pleasure.

The p. per time to begin work or repairs is in the early spring, just after the frost come out of the ground, as soon as the roads have thoroughly settled and dried out. Where the road is old, with a good solid bed, the first thing to be done is to cover it all over with a light dressing of gravelly material, and when possible finish it off with a top coating of hardpan; but avoid putting it on too thickly, lest the going become heavy, as it is slow to dry out. Loam is worse than useless, because it never packs properly, and makes mud. Care must be taken to raise the road up toward the center, and give it a slight elevation at the crown, but only just enough to shed the water on either side into the gutters. On a level, straight road the crown should only be slightly convex, for rounding up a narrow road in the middle is objectionable, insomuch as it has the immediate effect of forcing wheels of vehicles to run always in the same line and wear away the new material into deep ruts that quickly become water courses for the wash of the next rain, and assist the rapid destruction of the road by preventing the water from reaching the gutters. As fast as the new material can be laid on it should be very carefully raked over to remove all the large stones and as many of the smaller ones as possible; for where this precaution is neglected until the stuff packs down hard, which happens in a few days, the stones become so firmly embedded that they are not only difficult to remove, but soon cause the road to wear in humps and bumps, and later 21293-No. 8- -2

in the season, during the dry weather, they work up continually and become a source of annoyance and danger. These stones should never be left in piles along the roadside, to be driven into or scattered about by mischievous boys or stray cattle, but carted immediately away and dumped out of sight. The gutters should then be carefully cleaned by removing from them all deposits of mud, decayed leaves or branches which have collected there during the winter months; never allow this stuff to be heedlessly thrown along the edges of the gutters or on the banks above them, for the first rains will surely wash all back to its old place, and the work has to be done over again. It is even worse to spread it out on the road, according to the common but mistaken practice of many road-masters, since decayed material can never pack properly, and always tends to make mud in wet and dust in dry weather. Another practical reason in favor of keeping the gutters free just after the roads are first repaired, is that when the heavy spring and summer showers have washed away the greater portion of the good new coating, it is at once caught and retained in the gutters, ready to be used the first time the road needs patching, when a man or two can quickly put it in first-class order by simply shoveling back the material into its old place again and then raking it over.

In the early spring, while the gravel or hardpan is still sticky or heavy, the process of drying out and packing down can be greatly accelerated by keeping some one raking over the road to level off and smooth down the ruts as fast as they are made by the cutting in of the wheels, instead of allowing them to wear down deeper and deeper and to furnish sure channels for the wash of water which adds to the difficulty and expense of repairing. This method is quicker, easier, and far more economical than rolling, which requires a pair of horses, and it is surprising how great a distance a smart worker can get over and put in perfect order during a day. By repeating this raking once or twice, according to the condition of the road and the amount of travel apon it, the surface will pack down quite as hard and even as that of a park road.

Whenever a mud puddle appears, owing to some slight depression, in a place so shaded by trees or shadows of hills that the sun loses its power, it should never be left to dry out slowly, day after day, giving the wheels a chance to cut into it more deeply, but as soon as discovered a cart load of good, dry gravel should at once be dumped into it, then raked off, tramped down, and perhaps reraked until it packs hard and smooth.

Unfortunately farmers and road masters have a fixed idea that the one way to prevent bills, long and short, from washing, is to heap upon them quantities of those original tumular obstructions known indifferently as thank-you-ma'ams," "breaks," or "hummocks," and the number they can squeeze in upon a single hill is positively astonishing. I remember one hill, less than a quarter of a mile long, where I counted once as many as ten of these horse-killers and carriage-destroyers, yet in spite of these clumsy precautions the hill was always in bad order, and horses obliged to walk up it the whole way. Now, however, since the "breaks" have been removed and replaced by culverts, and the road properly graded and rounded at the crown, horses can trot easily either up or down, and it costs very little to keep the hill in good repair. Of course, much eloquence, tact, and flattery must be expended to bring about the desirable result of inducing the road masters to abandon their most cherished belief, but in the interest of good roads it is well worth the effort on the part of everybody. When "breaks" are done away with, the crown should merely be raised somewhat higher than on a level road, giving it a good pitch to the gutters, which in this case must be sufficiently wide and deep to contain the large amount of running water that often accumulates so rapidly on a hill during a heavy shower as to resemble a small torrent. At certain intervals, therefore, where too large a body of water would collect for the capacity of the gutters, instead of the antiquated "break," a culvert must be introduced, which will afford the means of carrying off the overflow into the adjoining woods or fields.