66 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



that is the most abominable system that could possibly be 

 devised. When I was a lad, I worked upon the highway under 

 that system. I did not like to work very well, but I do believe 

 I worked about as many hours as the rest of them, for they did 

 not do mucli work any way. But that system, as I said, has 

 long since gone by in Newton. 



Not satisfied with that, we then took another step forward. 

 On one side of us is Waltham, where they have most excellent 

 roads, under the direction of our friend Carter. On the other 

 side is Brookline and West Roxbury, both places having most 

 excellent roads (Brookline the better of the two). We have 

 not a large extent of road, perhaps somewhere between ninety 

 and a hundred miles. We found we must have something more 

 than this, so we purchased a stone-crusher. We have in our 

 town a great deal of stone in certain localities, and we pur- 

 chased a stone-crusher with a thirty horse-power engine. It is 

 one of the Rawson & Hittinger crushers ; — the Blake crusher is 

 a good one ; I have nothing to say against it. We placed that 

 stone-crusher where there is a great quantity of stone which 

 was taken out of the Cochituate Aqueduct, and we have been 

 able to get out from sixty to eighty tons a day with three men 

 besides the engineer ; and that material is being carted on the 

 roads at proper seasons. It has been carted in front of the 

 residence of a gentleman whom I see here, who is fully compe- 

 tent to discuss this question. Tlien we purchased a heavy 

 roller, for without a heavy roller you cannot have all the advan- 

 tages of macadamized roads ; that is required, and we have 

 purchased a roller, but it has not been used as yet to any con- 

 siderable extent. 



The radical defect of all the Newton roads, and many of the 

 roads in that vicinity, is their narrowness ; and tliis is not 

 likely to be improved while the county commissioners lay out 

 the roads fifty feet wide, though they make the roadway only 

 twenty-two feet in width, and insist that it shall have a rise of a 

 foot or more in the twenty-two feet, without requiring any drain- 

 age of the road whatever, except simple culverts across where 

 water is likely to accumulate on one side or the other of the road. 

 No matter wiiat the soil may be over wiiich the road goes, 

 no county commissioners, so far as I know, require the least 

 under-drainage. You will see, at a glance, that it is utterly 



