PLANTING AND CARE OF TREES 65 



cities have realized the necessity for abandoning this rectangular 

 or checkerboard arrangement of streets and are now planning some 

 diagonal routes between important points. Road builders should 

 keep in mind that often there is a saving of almost a third of 

 the distance between two points by traveling in a direct line. 

 Farmers who live in a checkerboard section would be astonished 

 if they should figure out the waste involved in traveling over 

 indirect routes for a period of ten or twenty years. Some farmers 

 would find that during their lives they have traveled thousands of 

 unnecessary miles. It is not an easy matter, however, to change 

 the location of a road and usually we must take them as we find 

 them. 



Although somewhat foreign to the subject under discussion, it 

 seems advisable to digress just long enough to make a suggestion 

 for the improvement of country road-beds in sections where stones 

 are abundanl. There are many such locations where the farmers 

 could build permanent roads in front of their farms by using the 

 stone from their fields instead of piling up huge walls that not 

 only occupy valuable space but furnish the best protection for 

 injurious insects and obnoxious creatures of various kinds. On 

 some farms the non-productive area on account of stone walls 

 often amounts to one-fifth of the total acreage. It would seem 

 like a feasible thing for the farmers in a certain community to 

 "get together" on a road improvement proposition of this kind. 

 The removal of the stone walls could be accomplished during the 

 winter months and most of the work done during slack seasons. 

 Some communities undoubtedly could afford to invest in a stone 

 crusher with which to -grind stone for dressing their roads. If 

 nothing but the native soil is used on top of the rocks the result 

 will be quite satisfactory, for, on account of the drainage afforded 

 by the stone foundation, such roads dry out quickly in wet seasons. 

 For economic reasons alone, the ridding of the farm of the scat- 

 tered and piled stones would be worth while. Furthermore, im- 

 proved roads in any community reduce the cost of transportation 

 and tend to increase land values. 



Mailing the Best Use of Existing Conditions — In many sections 

 of the East the problem is to keep down the brush along 

 the roadside. The custom in such places is to periodically 

 mow and burn ever3^thing within the highway limits. An able- 



