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OUR COMMON ROADS—MURPHY. 45 
GYPSUM AS A COVERING. 
A coarse crystaline gypsum has been made use of as a cover- 
ing for clay roads, in the neighbourhood of Maitland. It is the 
most unlikely kind of material we would consider to adopt as a 
road material (the Maitland gypsum is an anhydrate, as it 
contains but little water), yet its application is being continued 
as an useful and economical substitute for gravel or broken stone. 
It is applied in lumps as large as 3 and sometimes 4 inches 
across; it is reduced to powder by the wear of traffic, and seems 
to intermix with the clay and form a tolerably fair road surface. 
Cinders and Coal Shales are made use of ‘in a road in the 
neighbourhood of our colleries. They make a poor road. They 
are reduced under the wear of traffic to a fine dust in the summer 
season, which is blown away by the wind like sand dunes. 
There is generally some choice of road materials to be had even 
from local sources of supply, and if that at hand is not suitable 
or strong enough to stand the traffic to which it is exposed, it 
will always be a question whether it will be more economical to 
go farther for a better material at an increased cost. 
It may be desirable that all roads should be made strong 
enough for any traffic that may come upon them, but that will 
be a question of expense. However, until they are so made it is 
unfair to expect a road to bear heavy loads which it is not 
intended for. The Highways and Locomotives (Amendment) Act 
of 1878, whereby highway authorities in England may recover 
the excessive expenditure occasioned by extraordinary and ex- 
ceptionally heavy traffic, is a protection to roads in that country 
and might be well adopted in this. In such neighbourhoods as 
Bay Verte, where so much material is being hauled, and along 
the roads affected by the eatraordinary traffic caused by railway 
construction, companies, or contractors, should be required to 
repair the highways to the extent they may be damaged by such 
exceptional or extraordinary traffic. 
There would be much advantage obtained by having a man in 
charge of certain lengths of wet or clayey roads. Even if a man 
is not constantly employed on the surface work of the road, but 
