No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 225 



foundations as mud will not. That concave road-bed mi^ht 

 need to vary in depth from ten to forty inches, or more, 

 according to local conditions. Whoever is not familiar with 

 the study of roads may need to turn to the engraving in the 

 progress of this essay, or refer to the accompanying Appen- 

 dix, with illustrations, and should give much time also to 

 the structure of old and new highway work beneath the 

 surface. 



The road-bed of the picture may be of any width, with or 

 without foot-paths. In the worst situations the triple 

 drainage will be necessary; in others, one or 'two lines of 

 pipe will do ; in still others, natural drainage may be 

 trusted. Truth is unfit for us till it is fitted to our circum- 

 stances. 



In villages, city suburbs and the open country, wherever 

 the friction of travel is not too severe, gutters of fine grass 

 over gravel will utilize what else would be dust or mud, in 

 producing merchantable turf. The flattened ellipse is the 

 strongest and most economic form of stone in the road-bed. 

 Well filled, these road arches never "kick," and the stone 

 of them do not sink or break loose from one another. The 

 bottom of clean, coarse sand, or fine, clean gravel, of a dry, 

 loose quality, that would be entirely unfit for the surface of 

 a road, is, when puddled solid in the clay bed, admirably 

 fit to hold a stone-road up, while preventing the clay of the 

 subsoil from rising. 



Gillespie* says of sand: "This material, when it fills an 

 excavation, possesses the valuable properties of incompressi- 

 bility, and of assuming a new position of equilibrium and 

 stability when any portion of it is disturbed. To secure 

 these qualities in their highest degree, the sand should be 

 very carefully freed from the least admixture of earth or 

 clay, and the largest grains should not exceed one-sixth 

 of an inch in diameter, nor the smallest be less than one- 

 twenty-fourth of an inch." 



The above description answers for coarse, sharp, masonic 

 sand, suitable for heavy stone- work ; every expert mortar- 

 man or farmer is a judge of it. There are banks of fine 

 gravel, equally good for the foundation of broken-stone 



* " Roads and Railroads," New York, 1858 



