260 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



or $176 a mile. It will thus be seen that our system of partial or 

 incomplete repair is almost twice as expensive. 



But this is taking the most narrow view of the subject. An edi- 

 toi'ial in a recent Boston paper says : " The heaviest part of our 

 highway tax is no doubt that which is levied upon us by the de- 

 struction of horseflesh, the impeding of public travel, the wear of 

 vehicles, and the increased cost of transportation over our poor 

 roads. This is a tax which without any assessor or collector is in- 

 exorably exacted from every barrel of flour, every bag of grain, 

 every box of goods, and every person, passing over travelled roads. 

 As it is levied indirectly, and more than all as we have always paid 

 it, nobody thinks of it. But it is one of the heaviest burdens rest- 

 ing on the people of Massachusetts and of New England, borne by 

 those who rank among the most thrifty and pi-ogressive people on 

 earth, and who nevertheless in this every-day matter are demon- 

 strably rather more than two thousand years behind the world." 

 That this is not imaginary, statistics show. General Morin found, 

 by careful experiment, that " carriages on springs, drawn upon a 

 new road covered with gravel five inches thick, required in tractive 

 force one-eighth the load ; upon a solid causeway of earth, with 

 gravel one and a half inch thick, one-tenth the load ; upon a cause- 

 way of earth in very good condition, one-twenty-sixth the load ; 

 upon a broken stone road, very smooth, one-forty-fifth the load ; 

 upon a broken stone road, moist or dusty, one-thirtieth the load ; 

 upon a broken stone road, with ruts and mud, one-twentieth the 

 load ; upon a broken stone road, with deep ruts and thick mud, the 

 tractive force required was one-tenth the load," It will thus be seen 

 that the smooth causeway of earth, in very good condition, required 

 but one-twenty-sixth of its weight in tractive force to draw it, while 

 the smooth broken stone road required only one-forty-fifth the 

 weight of the load in tractive force. 



Before the invention of railroads the attention of engineers in 

 Great Britain and on the continent of Europe was largely given to 

 the construction of common roads and turnpikes, upon which the 

 heavy travel of those nations depended. Telford built, more than 

 fifty years ago, 800 miles of road in the highlands of Scotland, still 

 admirable and in constant use. The roads built by the French 

 engineers of the first empire are still among the finest in the world. 

 No one that has travelled over the Simplon road, or the Mt. Cenis 

 road, or from the St. Bernard pass to Martigny, or all around the Bay 

 of Naples to Sorrento, on a road built by Murat and which the lazy 

 Italians have had the grace to let alone, can possibly resist the claims 

 of a good, smooth, hard road. It adds new charms to scenery and 



