No. 4.] COUNTliY KOADS. 223 



ROAD MAKING AND MAINTENANCE. - THE LATTER 



WROUGHT INTO THE TEXTURE AND STRUCTURE 



OF THE ROAD. 



A RETURN TO FIRST PRINCIPLES. 



BY JAMES BRADFORD OLCOTT, SOUTH MANCHESTER, CONN. 



The truths of stone-road structure are as old as the hills. 

 Every road that runs over a knoll of good gravel reveals to 

 the industrial student the highway science of pulverized 

 rock in unequal sizes, compacted and fixed solid in their own 

 matrices. These naturally perfect bits of road are never 

 wet or loose, because their granulated substance cannot be 

 softened by water, and broken by frost ; they are rarely dry 

 because of capillary moisture ; they are always smooth, 

 because the pebbles composing them are hard enough to 

 endure friction, and because there are no stones large 

 enough to jolt the wheels of vehicles. 



Hence gravel knolls in the road are full of instruction for 

 the artificial road maker. His endeavor will be to manufac- 

 ture a gravel and a bed for it as good or better than the best 

 natural products. A coarse gravel is wanted, that will knit 

 and set in a clean masonic structure, nearly or quite as solid 

 as the original rock, and in the form of a floor convenient 

 for travel. This floor will be a roof, also, repelling the 

 water of rains and snows from its dry earthen foundations. 

 All theories, doctrines, systems and principles of stone-road 

 making that are good for anything originated among ob- 

 served facts in nature, like the road texture of the gravel 

 knolls above quoted, and may be brought back to them for 

 correction and strengthening. 



That isolated stones will settle in the earth by their own 

 superior gravity, and without the aid of Darwin's angle- 

 worms, was known to man as long ago as when the cities he 



