670 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



nary fatigue, at less than half the cost of horse-power, and at a 

 slight expense of paving and street cleaning, and without damage 

 to goods or clothing, from dust and mud; but of course I do not 

 propose to adopt man power, unless it may be for very light work, 

 in cases where there is not sufficient employment for machine 

 carriages. 



The pavement now under consideraion has the advantage of 

 easy traction; because it keeps the wheel always up to its level; 

 the indentations to catch the horses' corks are so small as not to 

 allow the tire to enter them, and so disposed that a horse-shoe 

 cannot slip more than an inch without one of its corks catching. 

 If the tires be an inch and a half wide, it will be equal to a per- 

 fectly smooth iron floor. And yet it will afford a better foothold 

 than any pavement now in use ; there is no form of grooving, no 

 block or cobble paving that will not allow more than an inch slip; 

 and there is none whose upper surface is so free from liability to 

 produce slipping, it being truly level. When surfaces are rounded, 

 like cobble, or grooved stone paving, the feet slip more or less at 

 almost every step, and the horse is fatigued by his efforts to keep 

 from falling; but if the surface be truly level he never slips at all, 

 unless heavily loaded, or made to stop or start too suddenly. 



Comparing this pavement with the honeycomb iron pavings in 

 Courtlandt street, we shall see its great superiority. That does 

 not keep the wheels up to their level, but allows them to fall into 

 the dirt holes between the iron points; two thirds of the time the 

 wheels run upon dirt, with a traction of 240 lbs. per ton; and du- 

 ring the other third they are jolted upwards by the iron points, 

 producing resistance from collision. The resistance must be much 

 greater, for narrow-rimmed wheels, than it is on block-stone 

 pavements; and, it being full of holes, it neither keeps the water 

 out nor the dirt in, but is the muddiest pavement in the city. It 

 has no merit but that of keeping its general level; it yields under 

 the wheels, is never solid and firm, and much power is expended 

 in moving it, as the wheels pass over it. 



How this monstrosity ever got adopted I do not know; it is 

 probably due to the oddity that made it patentable, to the great 

 efforts of the company that owns the patent, and to purchased in- 



