264 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



beware of feuds from new feudalities. To show that 

 engineering is not immutable, but will change, like other 

 arts, for its bread and butter, this cross-section of Telford's 

 celebrated Holyhead road is given from Gillespie : — 



#y^yfei^^i 



Whether Telford actually did line the road-bottom of 

 Holyhead Pike with larger stones set up on end as above, 

 without 'puddling and packing them solid in fine gravel or 

 sand, over undrained clays, will not be known unless cuts 

 across his old work are made to show exactly how it was 

 done. But any one who thinks about it must see that, if 

 the bottom course of stone was full of crevices, over wet 

 loam or clay, the soil would be forced up to fill the crevices, 

 and the stone would have to go down under the weight of 

 wheels, leaving corresponding depressions on the finished 

 surface, and making a rough road. 



Aside from the above question, Telford may have had 

 two practical advantages in that bottom course of large 

 stone. 



First, He could use hard or soft, tough or brittle rubbish 

 stone from fields or quarries that had little value for any- 

 thing else. 



Second, The chipping, trimming and setting up of rough 

 stone in that formal way, if it enabled Telford to call in and 

 pay a sort of skilled labor, paviors and the like, he thus 

 secured a large following to sound his praises. The same 

 conditions exist now. 



"We have in some sections immense quantities of tough, 

 laminate, quarry rubbish and field stones, that cannot be 

 easily broken by hand or machine. These may be stuffed 

 in the deep bottom of a road-bed or dumped in a slough- 

 hole to get rid of them, no doubt, and, with plenty of sand 

 and gravel tilling, will help hold up a smooth road. But 

 what needs to be dinned and repeated in the public, tax- 

 paying ear, is, that, no matter in whose name or by what 

 system these rubbish and waste stone are set up in a 



