270 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



When once such soils are nicely graded, what is left then 

 but sand, gutter-wash or muck for the scraper to bite at? 

 Road scrapers work best where the soil bakes quickly in 

 spring, and is hard, gravelly and stubborn ; not where the 

 ground can be stirred easily in any open month ; there is the 

 place for carting better road material. Forehanded and 

 alert road-men used to keep two or three furrows of fresh 

 soil or subsoil mellowing in the bottom or outside of gut- 

 ters, to turn upon the highway after a month or two, and 

 not bump themselves with tough sods in the road when they 

 drove to meeting or market. 



There is a great deal of private road iniquity. Promising 

 children of smart parents — in lack of clean brooks to play 

 in — are spoiled for being good road judges when they are 

 quite small, by sailing boats during showery weather in the 

 gutter walk, constantly ruined by the garden rake and water. 



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Ten two-horse loads of good foot-path or walk-gravel, of 

 a red sandstone character, and without pebbles, were laid in 

 the private road to the writer's door, three years ago, for 

 experiment. The worn, sanely loam and subsoil the gravel 

 was laid on is about as fine as snuff for twenty feet in depth. 

 For more than two years this fine gravel refused to pack. A 

 rain would settle it hard, but directly it would work up 

 mealy again, and was the cause of much local criticism. 

 During last summer this short strip of road was ballasted at 

 different times, with no more than five or six barrow-loads 

 of pebbles picked from the garden. The most of these were 

 as small as English walnuts. Some were so large as to need 

 breaking on the spot after they were spread, and all were 

 precisely the kind of pebbles that are often raked up and 

 shovelled away, with weeds and turf-trimmings, by ill-trained 

 gardeners, to make piles of rubbish close to their composts. 

 The road has since become hard and smooth, and the grass 

 edges are growing into the gravel. 



