120 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



practicable, to interesting spots and pleasant prospects ; but in 

 a hilly or undulating country the main roads should, as far as 

 possible, be laid out in easy gradients with a continuous ascent 

 to the highest parts of the forest, and not in the uphill and 

 downhill way so often seen on estates. Highways and rail- 

 ways usually traverse the lower slopes of hills, or the valleys, 

 and the advantage of having forest roads laid out as described 

 is that timber waggons go up empty and come down loaded. 

 Alternating steep ascents and descents greatly lengthen a 

 journey and add enormously to the cost of haulage and road 

 repairs. Horses have, of course to be employed in hauling 

 timber, and in Yorkshire, where this work is well understood, 

 six horses are, as a rule, employed to draw two waggons, each 

 waggon usually carrying from two to three tons of timber, or 

 from eighty to one hundred and twenty cubic feet The reason 

 of so many horses being required is generally the uneven 

 nature of the roads and their being laid out in the wrong place, 

 as, for example, when a road through a wooded valley 

 traverses, with many ups and downs, the hillside half-way 

 between its summit and its base, instead of the bottom of the 

 valley. In a situation of this kind the timber from the under- 

 side of the road has to be dragged up from the ravine to the 

 road by heavy tackling of blocks and pulleys attached to 

 standing trees, which are often injured thereby. Work like 

 this takes up much time, is arduous and expensive, and very 

 trying to horses. Then when the waggons are loaded and 

 despatched, one has to be unyoked at every incline and the 

 six horses attached to one waggon to pull it to the top, and 

 then unyoked again to return for the second waggon, and so 

 on, as often as may be necessary. The road gets torn up 

 also by the horses' feet in the ascent and ploughed up by the 

 slipper or brake in the descent, entailing extensive road repairs. 

 In Germany, on the Hartz Mountains, the roads have, as far 

 as practicable, a continuous winding ascent, and the trees are 

 not dragged up to the roads, but are slid down to them and 

 loaded on to timber waggons drawn by oxen the loads 

 equalling those drawn by the same number of horses in 

 England, only the road being downhill the work is easy. 



Shooting rides >we have elsewhere recommended to be 

 twelve feet wide, but main wood-roads should not be less than 

 sixteen feet wide, in order to allow vehicles to pass each 

 other, and they should have a twenty-four-inch deep drain at 

 each side on soft or retentive land. Main roads do not 

 require to be deeply macadamised, as heavy traffic is not fre- 



