54 MASSACHUSETTS HOETICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ver}^ material!}^ to the draught. In order to lessen the wear of the 

 road during the dry season, the surface must be sprinkled ; an 

 operation which confers a blessing upon both man and beast at the 

 same time.* 



"Bowles, in his book, 'Our New West,' mentions the case of 

 the stage road from Sacramento to Virginia City, via PlacerAalle, 

 one hundred and fifty miles long, and having an annual traffic of 

 seven or eight thousand heavy teams, and whose proprietors found 

 that the simplest and cheapest way of keeping it in repair during 

 dry weather was to sprinkle the whole of it — one hundred and fifty 

 miles of mountain road."t 



We have now given what may be considered as the standard in 

 road building, and we have stated how that standard can best be 

 maintained. It would seem superfluous for us to say, that as a 

 people, we fall very far below that standard. No one who has 

 the least occasion to travel on our ill-constructed roads can fail to 

 be aware of their imperfect condition during a greater portion of 

 the year, a condition which could only be excused in the most 

 thinl}' inhabited mountainous or sandy districts. Strange as it may 

 appear, even our immediate community is not yet educated up to a 

 full knowledge of the value of good highways, although a gradual 

 advance in the right direction is perceptible. 



Large sums of mone^' are annually expended upon our roads, 

 which may be said to be actually lost for want of proper and con- 

 stant superintendence. Not only are many of them improperly 

 built at the outset, but when repairs are made these are perfonned 

 in such an imperfect manner, with such poor material, and often in 

 the dry season, that travel over them is rendered more difficult than 

 ever, while the first heavy rainfall is too apt to wash away all 

 traces of the attempts at renovation. 



One of the causes of our deficiencies in these matters may 

 doubtless be attributed to a s^'stem long pursued in this state, 

 which, however well it may have been adapted to the colonial 

 period, is no longer applicable at the present day. We refer to a 

 law of this commonwealth, which requires towns to raise annually 

 a certain amount of money to be appropriated to the making and 

 repairing of roads, to divide the town into districts, and to appoint 

 a survej^or over each district, who shall see that the money is 



* See First Prize Essay, Massachusetts Agricultural Report, 1869-70, pp. 242, 243. 

 tlhifl, p. 237. 



