220 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



but communicating from time to time with the side ditches or 

 drains. Should, however, the ground underneath be porous 

 enough, the drains may be dispensed with ; and if in their stead 

 holes be dug along the lowest -lines, marked o, a, and these filled 

 with large stone, the water will, through them, drain away into 

 the ground. 



Roads. — To make a good road surface is a very simple oper- 

 ation after it is only once understood, and, the fundamental 

 principles thereof once comprehended, they can hardly be for- 

 gotten. Everything connected with the construction, the use 

 and maintenance of roads, was, in times past, before the inven- 

 tion of railways, the subject of exact observations and experi- 

 ments, many and varied in their character. Besides this, we 

 have the results of a great number of years of experience in 

 older countries, and there would seem to be little to invent, but 

 much to learn, in this branch of construction. Though less 

 progressive than other branches, there are nevertheless improve- 

 ments in road-making, especially in road-making machinery and 

 tools ; and no treatise on this or any other living subject can be 

 considered complete a very few years after it is written. 



Ancient roads were made with a surface as nearly resembling 

 the solid rock as possible. So, in China, roads were made of 

 huge granite blocks laid on immovable foundations. In time 

 these became worn with ruts, especially in the joints or seams 

 of the stones, and the surface generally so smooth that animals 

 could hardly stand, far less trot on it. They are now for the 

 most part deserted, and left to be covered up by land-slides, 

 &c., to one side of the new roads of travel. 



The invention of McAdam consisted in having no large stone 

 at all on the roadway, but having it all pounded into small frag- 

 ments and spread over the road-bed. This has, without fear of 

 efiicient contradiction or shadow of doubt, been proved by trial 

 to be a worthless proceeding, though at one time popular, and 

 even now only too often done, either from ignorance or laziness. 

 The separate fragments of stone, having no bond among them- 

 selves, are liable to sink into the underlying ground or road- 

 bed, evenly or unevenly as it may chance, more in one place 

 than in another, and thus never come to rest or to an even top 

 surface. Between these two extremes of an ancient Chinese 

 solid rock road and that of McAdam, lies the true principle of 



