No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS— APPENDIX. 271 





Private roads and avenues of the ' ' gutter- walk " pattern are 

 out of place. In cities, with houses close together, gutter 

 walks and roads may be unavoidable, and they should 

 be paved ; but in the country, where there is room enough, 

 walks and roads should be raised and rounded. This 

 prevents mud, dust and ice. Instead of being lower, 

 their centres and entire breadth should be higher, than 

 the bordering grass. In the best private work the edges 

 of roads and walks will blend imperceptibly in grade 

 with the turf, which should take the watershed of the 

 travelled ways at once. It is precisely so with the 

 finished country road. Highway means high way. If 

 we relieve our gardeners and road makers from their mis- 

 chievous use of the garden rake on our gravel ways, they 

 will have more time to kill weeds and nourish grass. Where 

 so much is to be done, misdirected labor is simply wicked. 



In villages we suffer with dust, and handle too much 

 worthless street mud. Except in crowded city thorough- 

 fares, mud and dust might, with due knowledge of grass, be 

 removed occasionally and nicely from rural and suburban 

 gutters in the form of fine turf, and have the highest market 

 value in that form. Instead of dusty and muddy street- 

 fronts, adjoining residents might run their lawn-mowers on 

 easy slopes quite to the verge of wheel tracks. "We occa- 

 sionally see neat and painstaking householders doing that 

 already. We have only to be agreeable, and convene to 

 make that a welcome fashion. Grass gutters shed water 

 from the road. Mud does not. 



By the fine wash and occasional dust of ever so solid and 

 narrow roads, bordering and gutter turf will gradually become 

 too high from the continual accretion of fine material. To 

 lift this turf handsomely and profitably turf-paring machines 

 are needed. Perfect turf-cutters have been, can be and arc 

 made and sold. To enforce this idea, a contrivance of the 



