MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 405 



purpose, it is a great improvement over the ordinary land scraper. It is slightly- 

 rounded on the bottom, it has a cutting edge of fully four feet ; it is two feet 

 from the cutting edge to the back of the scraper ; the back is eight inches wide, 

 and makes an oblique angle with the bottom. The handles are fastened as in or- 

 dinary scrapers ; they are of two feet in length and are connected near their free 

 extremities by a round bar of wood. The cost of the scraper was ten dollars. 

 The Chicago Ditcher and Scraper Company make an excellent form of road 

 scraper, which they guarantee to be made of best materials, and of ap2:)roved 

 ■workmanship. These scrapers have proved highly satisfactory, so far as I can 

 learn, to all who have tried them. The price certainly is very reasonable. At 

 a comj)etitive test under the auspices of the Agricultural Society of the State of 

 Illinois, at Roberts, in Ford county. III, August 11th and 12th, 1875, a road* 

 eighty rods long and thirty-nine feet wide from ditch to ditch, was made at a 

 cost of less than seventeen cents per rod, calculating man and team at three 

 dollars per day. 



PEACTICAL DIEECTIONS. 



The following methods of preparing a turnpiked road are followed by differ- 

 ent road makers. It may be advisable in many cases not to employ any one 

 method to the exclusion of the others, but to employ a combination of the 

 methods, or one a portion of the time, and the other the remainder: 



First method (employed by Prof. A. B. Gulley in building the Detroit & 

 Saline gravel road). — This requires one teamster and one or two men to handle 

 the scraper, the number depending on its weight. On the side of the roadbed 

 and parallel to it, plow just the number of furrows that will give a good scraper 

 load when the scraper is drawn square across the road. Two or three furrows 

 will be sufficient ; if too many are plowed the scraper will not do clean work. 

 Scrape these upon the roadbed by driving square across the road to the center, 

 then back to the place of loading, having the men pull back the scraper, and 

 the teamster attend to the team alone. Treat the other side of the road in the 

 same manner. Then plow again on the first side outside of the first furrows 

 and scrape as before. Proceed in this manner until the road has been brought 

 to the required form, finishing up the side channels as directed. 



Second method. — This differs from the first in no essential manner except iu 

 driving from one side of the road to the other, taking loads alternately from 

 each side of the road and leaving them as before described. The labor required 

 in handling the scraper will be less than in the first method. 



Third Method. — The third way of constructing a turnpike road is to first 

 plow the sod on the side of the road the width of the ditches, which should not 

 be less than 10^ feet for a road bed 24 feet wide ; second, scrape the turf or sod 

 upon the center of the road, striking the furrows endwise with the scraper and 

 having the team pass around in a circle ; third, when the sod the whole width 

 of the ditches is removed to the road-bed, plow again, making the furrows 

 deeper to the center of the ditches. Scrape this earth upon the road-bed, round- 

 ing up the center and filling all inequalities caused by the sod ; fourth, drive 

 lengthwise of the ditch with the scraper and remove all obstructions to the con- 

 tinuous flow of water. One man only is required by this method, the manual 

 labor is considerably lessened as compared with the other methods, though the 

 team work is increased. The relative cost of the different methods will depend 



*This road was of the same form, in most particulars, as tlie one described, and liad a road-bed of 

 twenty-flve feet in width. 



