PAVEMENTS FOR THE CARRIAGE-WAYS IN CITIES. 



BY HORACE P. RUSS. 



There is no subject so diflBcult to treat upon, as the art of road- 

 making, as there is no art which has so many professors, all of 

 whom dififer as widely in their opinions as in their mode of con- 

 struction. 



The absence of success in nearly every experiment that has 

 been tried in different cities, may probably account for the un- 

 abated efforts of thousands yet to produce the much desired 

 result; and if the contest were confined to practical minds, there 

 can be little doubt, but that the vast sums of money, that are 

 annually expended upon the carriage ways of cities, would be 

 productive of some good, whereas, to the contrary, the expendi- 

 tures result generally in the discovery of a mode of paving per- 

 fectly useless. 



To enquire into the cause of such repeated failures, in the same 

 cities and upon the same roads or streets, would promptly meet 

 with the response, that the failure of an engineer to construct a 

 good road or street, is paramount to his removal for ever from 

 that branch of his profession; so that, instead of giving him the 

 benefit of his error, thus affording him the opportunity of avoiding 

 it in future, he is cast aside for some other person, with equally 

 sanguine hopes, promises and theoretical representations, who 

 enters upon his project blindfolded with inexperience, without 

 the possibility of gaining assistance from others, for his method 

 is the child of his own brain and the nourishment from his own 

 mind alone, can raise it to a practical existence. 



