252 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



men, when they have got through planting, having got d little 

 tired, go on to the roads. They seem to think it is not cheating 

 themselves, but only cheating the town, if they idle away the time, 

 and so they will get together and "talk horse." That is the great 

 theme. They all have fast horses, or colts that are "threatened 

 with speed," as Mr. Chamberlain said this morning. It is not so 

 in aH districts. There are some where the people take an interest 

 in the highways, and frequently give a great deal of labor in break- 

 ing the roads during the winter season. Such districts have good 

 roads. 



The trouble is not so much from ignorance, although there is un- 

 doubtedly much of that, or from want of proper supervision, but 

 from the fact that there is no money to put on them. And then, 

 road fences are nuisances which should be abolished ; they are the 

 chief cause of the heavy snow drifts in winter. 



Great improvement can be effected by passing over the road 

 every spring, and frequently in summer, and removing all the peb- 

 bles. Our surveyor went through the entire district this season, 

 and picked out every stone that would obstruct transportation, no 

 matter whether large or small, and our road is much better for it. 

 In some districts, the roads are covered with these stones, which 

 are very annoying and a great obstruction. 



In regard to building roads, so far as I have had experience, it 

 would not agree with the lecturer's method, which was, as I un- 

 derstood it, to leave the road nearly level and not much raised. 

 Now, our practice in building roads, of late, has been to make 

 them rather narrow and quite convex. We may be wrong. We 

 do not pretend to l)o engineers, by any means, but we have suc- 

 ceeded in getting very good roads in that way. 



I have travelled in New Hampshire, where I found roads go 

 around the hills instead of over them. The general plan among 

 the first settlers here was to make the roads as straight as possible, 

 going over the hills. As Mr. Lebroke has said, it may be no fur- 

 ther around a hill than over it, and I think that when new roads 

 are to be built, or changes made in old ones, this should be re- 

 garded. The zigzag road of which he spoke is an entirely new 

 idea to me. 



Mr. Lebroke. I would ask Mr. Leland, if a road is made quite 

 narrow, and very convex, is tliere not danger that it will not ful- 

 fill the statute requirement, that highways shall be safe and con- 



