LOOSE STONES— DRAINAGE. 49 



foot thick and sometimes more in the middle, designed to form a 

 crown to the road. If you ask what tliat's for, you will be likely 

 to be told that it will all flatten down in a few months, and that 

 it is the best way to drain the water off. You will observe that 

 it drives the teams off to one side, often compelling them to cut 

 up the grass along the gutters. It requires no argument to 

 show that this is all wrong, both in principle and in fact, for 

 this mass of stuff acts more like a sponge than like a duck's 

 back, and you can never expect to make a permanently good 

 road by leaving the surface in that way. 



And this leads to another most common defect, which arises 

 from the custom of semi-annual repairs, and that is the neglect 

 to pick up and remove the small loose stones that are constantly 

 working up through the improperly applied material to lie on 

 the surface, to hammer up the road-bed at every blow of the 

 wheel, and to endanger life and limb. Hard, firm rocks pro- 

 jecting above the surface are bad enough, and cause the resist- 

 ance of collision, but other inequalities, loose round stones and 

 other loose materials striking against the wheels are far worse, 

 for they cause great loss of momentum and waste of the power 

 of draught, for the carriage has to be lifted up over them by 

 the leverage of the wheels. Any town that fails to remove such 

 obstacles promptly and often, ought at least to be reported to 

 the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. No 

 money can be better invested than in frequently removing the 

 loose stones always to be found in a badly constructed road, and 

 in snow-ploughs for a prompt removal of snow in winter. 



But perhaps the most common defect to be observed in the 

 methods of making repairs upon the roads is the total want of 

 any proper attention to the drainage. You will see whole miles 

 of roadway perfectly water-logged in spring, making it very 

 difficult for light carriages to pass over them, and for heavily 

 loaded teams quite impossible. The treatment for such sections 

 requires to be radical. They need reconstruction quite as much 

 as the worst portions of the South, and it needs quite as much 

 skill and judgment to reconstruct, properly, roads that have 

 been badly built, as it does to make good roads in the first 

 place, and probably more. But drainage is one of the things 

 that can be carried out in the course of repairing without any 

 very serious outlay over and above what it would have cost to 

 7 



