240 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



I had just before heard floating among the arches of the 

 grand old cathedral had to be averaged with these street- 

 discords in rny Yankee mind. "Make ye your paths 

 straight" is a good word for modern roads. 



Road making could be taught and learned much more 

 effectively, were the real materials here present in the hands 

 of experts. If a few barrels of fit earths, gravels and broken 

 rocks were at hand, with water for tempering and means for 

 manipulating them in trough-like road-bottoms in miniature, 

 it would not be in the least difficult to make public exhibi- 

 tions, over and over again, of every needful point in the 

 business, so a child need not err therein. Every fair-ground 

 should be utilized for that purpose, on larger scales than 

 would be as easy under cover. We are being regularly 

 educated now to let road mending be a lucrative business 

 for others than ourselves. Available sources of this or that 

 substance are owned by parties who can well afford to teach 

 us to forget and forego the right use of our own materials, 

 and give them a perpetual income. It is a wonder we are 

 not importing material for country roads, as we do peat- 

 bedding for horses. 



A grand object lesson for a sleepy farmers' meeting, during 

 the present phases of indoor road study, would be to have 

 not a ray of light in the room for a moment, except what 

 shone from an inch of tallow-dip, lighted on the speaker's 

 desk, with about a peck of " even-sized" broken stone piled 

 up around it. That w^ould exceed any electric light, yet, in 

 our business ! 



Every local road-job has its own laws and conditions to 

 be studied, perhaps to break them. These are too many for 

 this place. Often the wilfulness of some private individual 

 is a -nag to be avoided if possible. Once I found five 

 hundred loads of village rubbish lying on top of the gravel 

 I wanted. In that case after needful diplomacy, I made a 

 special stretch of public road, where a till was advisable, to 

 hold that rubbish. Forty big loads of old spring-beds, 

 kitchen boilers, stove-pipe, iron-hoops, tin cans, umbrellas, 

 etc., went into the bottom of a very good bit of wheeling, 

 where it was miry before, — to the great astonishment of 

 by-standers. The party of action requires some nerve in 



