228 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



hollow structure because it was said to be " scientific." It 

 made a show of rough road quickly, and was much less 

 trouble than mixing the different sizes of stone together, for 

 really solid work, alter they had been assorted according to 

 municipal orders at the crusher. 



But no thoughtful city with a clay subsoil, considering the 

 money it has sunk in stone gone wandering amidst the mud 

 of its rough and dirty thoroughfares, ran regard that porous 

 doctrine with anything but disgust. It won't hold water. 

 Hadn't we better go into asphalt? Is it worth while to 

 try playing that porous swindle on the country at this late 

 day, even in the compound form of " Telford-Macadam?" 



Telford was a shepherd's son, who learned the stone- 

 mason's trade in his youth, and became a great engineer. 

 He believed in setting large cobble stones, points upwards, 

 to stay the middle of his track. That gave employ to the 

 paving fraternity, and strengthened his gangs with men 

 who loved stone. This was good, but where is the 

 evidence that he contrived hungry open-work in the bottom 

 of Holyhead Pike to swallow all his surface finish? Nobody 

 who studies the slow geologies of the holes in stone-roads 

 to-day, can believe the eminent engineer gave his name to a 

 hollowness that every common laborer of that time would 

 detect. He must have filled that with sand or gravel. 



The magnitude of M' Adam's job, with thirty thousand 

 miles of abominable stone roads, accumulated by centuries 

 of mismanagement, and waiting his revolutionary hand, 

 compelled him to say to the committee of Parliament 

 that he was not lifting but four inches of their horrid old 

 highways, and breaking the stones of them over again. 

 That was as deep as he dared let government know he was 

 thinking at that time. The dirty bottoms of stone he left 

 underneath might be construed into evidence that he 

 approved that way of building a road, if he had not 

 expressly denied it. Yet that is all the foundation we 

 have for coupling the names of Telford and M'Adain 

 together in a compound "system." He saw the cover 

 for dele live work in the use of large stones in the road- 

 bed, and in theory and practice would have none of 

 them. Break the stone into homogeneous rock gravel, 



