FORESTEY AND ARBORICULTUEE. 69 



grow at the sides, a minimum of gravelly surface would be 

 exposed to the winds, and much of the nuisance arising from 

 the great clouds of dust be avoided through the dry season. 



The desirability of good and attractive roads for ordinary 

 travel, as well as for pleasure driving, must be admitted. 

 Here, too, the formal effect of regularly planted street trees 

 should give place to a more natural grouping, with a greater 

 variety of species, and a judicious growth of bushes, herbs 

 and climbing plants should be encouraged at the roadside 

 and along the walls and fences. 



Where such already exist, the shrubs and other plants are 

 frequently cut down and left in rough piles, thus transform- 

 ing into a rubbish heap that which was before an interesting 

 garden bed. For what reason this is done, or why, as is 

 too often the case, the little gullies at the roadside are al- 

 lowed to be filled up with refuse from the shoemaker's shop 

 or with tin cans and other discarded household effects, it is 

 difficult to imagine. 



Another pernicious custom, in vogue in the vicinity of Bos- 

 ton, is to burn at the roadside the leaves and brush collected 

 during the spring and autumn clearings of the road. These 

 fires, of course, disfigure a certain space each time and in 

 many instances spread into the surrounding bushes, injuring 

 the appearance of the roadside and endangering the life of 

 any trees which may be growing there by burning the bark 

 about their trunks. 



As the care of the country roads is usually subdivided 

 among the farmers of the town, no special system is 

 adopted, and a variety of treatment is given the roadside 

 as well as the roads themselves. A systematic management 

 in the hands of one competent man has been shown, where it 

 has been tried,* to give much better results, without addi- 

 tional expense. 



To quote a little vokime recently published as a law 

 book : t " Good roads have a tendency to make the country 

 a desirable dwelling-place, and a town which is noted for its 

 good roads becomes the abode of people of taste, wealth 

 and intelligence." There is law enough to protect the road- 



• Town of Chelmsford, Mass., 66. " The Road and the Roadside," Potter, p. 25. 

 t Ibid., p. 10. 



