No. 4.] COUN1TCY ROADS. 231 



old roads he was reworking, so that his broken rocks needed 

 spreading widely to mix all sorts together. He feared that 

 a shovelful of very hard or very soft rock, by wearing un- 

 equally, might make a lump or a hole in his road. But the 

 produce of our quarries is or may be so uniform in quality 

 that the obsolete precaution has no reason in it for us ; yet 

 we .see the slow-spreading motion surviving in our road- 

 craft, while vital matters are forgotten. 



For once in the world there was a road-mender who actu- 

 ally made the wheeling better. People drove out of their 

 way to see it done, and were happy to assist in testing and 

 trampling the new work solid. While every neighborhood 

 wrought before its own doors and was making its own roads 

 clean and sound, fit for any woman or child to walk upon in 

 muddy weather, we may be sure there was generous rivalry 

 between the different sections, and many merry challenges 

 and blithesome rallyings as the good work went on. 



Precisely when the salt of M' Adam's example was lost, 

 and greed and craft got possession of the roads again, 

 appears in no history. But a change is noted in one of Mary 

 Russell Mitford's English sketches. She describes it as a 

 "misfortune" that "has befallen us underfoot. . . . For 

 the last six months some part or other of the highway has 

 been impassable for any feet except such as are shod by the 

 blacksmith ; and even the four-footed people who wear iron 

 shoes make wry faces — poor things ! — at those stones, 

 enemies to man and beast. ... I never wish to see a 

 road-mender again." 



We only need to be reminded here how the rough road- 

 menders, in every form, from pig-pen sods, tracks of excru- 

 ciating rocks, spruce and granite blocks and the smoke of 

 coal-tar torment, have run riot over this American land, till 

 the people are driven again to learn to mend their own roads. 



Never reprinted in this country, the scarce writings * of 

 M'Adam are still our best resource for the genuine science 

 of broken-stone roads. With nothing whatever to sell, he 

 could afford to tell the truth, as follows : — 



' ' Having secured the soil from under-water, the road- 



* Thanks to Prof. W. H. Brewer, of Sheffield Scientific School, for the use of 

 one of them. 



