HOW TO MAKE MUD AND DUST. 51 



inverted V, with the point directed up the ascent, so as to divide 

 tlie water. 



Another very serious mistake in mending our roads, or 

 rather in attempting to mend them, is to plough up the side 

 ditclies and throw the material, sods, sand and manure, which 

 the rains have washed off into them, back into the centre of the 

 drive-way. Absurd as this practice appears, it is quite too com- 

 mon in our country roads, and that, too, in many cases, where 

 good road material is easily accessible. The consequence of it 

 is, that the first rains convert this loose organic material, vastly 

 better for a top-dressing for grass than for the surface of a 

 road, into a perfect slough of mud, and a hard rain washes it 

 back into the ditch. In a dry season this material becomes a 

 perfect bed of dust annoying to the traveller, destructive to 

 vehicles, and about as bad as the mud itself. No strength of 

 language is adequate to do justice to the iniquity of this bad 

 practice, and the surveyor who allows it ought to be complained 

 of as an enemy to society. It is absolutely destructive to any 

 good road, and it would be better economy for the town to 

 throw the money directly into the ditch and let it lie there. It 

 would be as reasonable to expect to improve the road by the 

 application of meadow muck, and yet, I could point you to 

 more than one large and wealthy town within ten miles of here, 

 where, last spring I saw whole gangs of men doing this very 

 thing, with garden hoes and spades, to cut and throw into the 

 centre of the road the turf and mould and vegetable earth from 

 the side ditches. The roads in those towns before that sad attack 

 upon them were a standing disgrace to any civilized community, 

 and yet I watched them day by day through the long summer 

 only to see them sink lower and lower in quality till it became 

 positively dangerous to ride over them. 



Nothing is more certain, nothing better established by the 

 experience of engineers and of practical men, than that a solid 

 and unyielding foundation is one of the first requisites for a 

 good road. And yet to throw such material as sods and sand 

 and loam into the road from the sides, even if it is designed to 

 cover it with a coating of gravel, is utterly destructive to the 

 foundation of the road. All such stuff should be carefully 

 thrown out of the road-bed, as the first and most important 

 step in laying, the foundation. The loose stones that have from 



