Country Roads and Roadside Improvements 125 



ground has become fully settled that the repair material 

 may settle into the soft soil. 



If the shoulders (a, Fig. 71) of the road are kept worked off 

 by the road-scraper or plough, and a thin coating of gravel be 

 put on in the centre each season, any ordinarily well under- 

 drained road can be kept in good repair at a very small cost. 



Road-scrapers when properly used are great labor-savers, 

 and in sections where ordinary soil must be used — and there 

 are many such — they save a great amount of labor and 

 expense. WTiere the unworn material on the edges can be 

 used to advantage, or for the purpose of breaking off the 

 shoulders, the rounding of the surface of the road in the 

 spring, the road-scraper will do the work quickly and thor- 

 oughly, but to use it during the summer for any other 

 purpose than for scraping off the worn material will result 

 in more harm than good. 



The practice of turnpiking or scraping poor material, like 

 turf and loam, into the middle of the road during the summer 

 will largely account for the poor condition of many of our 

 roads. 



All turf turned up by the road-scraper or plough should be 

 removed from the road-bed entirely and used for filling in 

 over steep enbankments, deep gutters, or in levelling up 

 and otherwise improx'ing the roadside. 



Roadside Improvement 



In the rush and hurry to gain wealth or fame we Americans 

 often forget everything but our immediate surroundings, 

 and our roadsides, even in the vicinity of many well-kept 

 residences, are in a state of utter neglect — not only this, 

 but the roadsides are made a dumping-place for rubbish of 

 all sorts. 



It would require but little time or expense to put the 



