546 



PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part III. 



3490. The cleaning of roads is effected by sweeping, scraping, watering, and washing. 



3491. Sweeping, as a mode of cleaning roads, is chiefly applicable to pavements, to side 

 railways, whether of stone or iron, and to footpaths. It has been proposed to be effected 

 by a machine drawn by one or more horses early in the morning before the road was 

 much frequented ; but it is probably better to leave it to old and infirm persons. On 

 country roads, sweeping could only be required to keep the paved or rail-laid part, 

 where such existed, free from small stones or gravel which the feet of cattle, &c. might 

 scatter over it from the metalled part. 



3492. Scraping is an operation universally necessary to keep roads clean, by the 

 removal of mud in wet weather, and dust in a very dry season, and snow in winter. 

 It has been performed by machinery ; and on a well-made road, this mode might be 

 attended with a considerable saving of labor. Were the scraping board edged with a brush 

 of wires, or even of birch spray, the work even on a road somewhat irregular, might be 

 done to great perfection. Both in scraping and sweeping, care should be taken as soon 

 as possible to dispose of the mud or dust either in making or keeping up the sides of the 

 road or fence mounds, or in such other way as circumstances may direct. Hand 

 scrapers are commonly made with iron plates ; biit a piece of board is considered less 

 likely to raise the surface of the road. 



3493. Watering, where applied to roads, is more for the sake of laying the dust than 

 cleaning or preserving. Some consider it injurious in the latter capacity. B. Farey 

 considers that watering the Whitechapel-road in summer, and especially before May and 

 after August, is very injurious, by separating the stones, owing to the softening of the 

 loam, and so making the road spongy and loose. In winter, however, he waters, and 

 for the following reasons : " After the most careful sifting of the gravel, a small quan- 

 tity of loamy dirt will unavoidably still adhere to the stones, and this loam, together with 

 a glutinous matter which accumulates in the summer from the dung and urine of the 

 cattle (which accumulation the summer-watering has a tendency to increase), occasions 

 the wheels to stick to the materials, in certain states of the road, in spring and autumn, 

 when it is between wet and dry, particularly in heavy foggy weather, and after a frost ; 

 by which sticking of the wheels, the Whitechapel-road is often, in a short time, dread- 

 fully torn and loosened up ; and it is for remedying this evil that I have, for more than 

 eight years past, occasionally watered the road in winter. As soon as the sticking and 

 tearing up of the materials is observed to have commenced, several water-carts are em- 

 ployed upon these parts of the road, to wet the loamy and glutinous matters so much, 

 that they will no longer adhere to the tire of the wheels, and to allow the wheels and feet 

 of the horses to force down and again fasten the gravel-stones ; the traffick, in the course 

 of four to twenty-four hours after watering, forms such a sludge on the surface, as can 

 be easily raked off by wooden scrapers, which is performed as quickly as possible after 

 which the road is hard and smooth ; the advantages of this practice of occasional winter- 

 watering have been great ; and it might, I am of opinion, be adopted with like advan- 

 tages on the other entrances into London, or wherever else the traffick is great, and the 

 gravel-stones are at times observed to be torn up by the sticking of the wheels. 



3494. One of the best construction of watering barrels {fig. 447.), is that used on the 

 Uxbridge-road, in which the water is delivered with the greatest regularity from a cast- 



447 



