CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 319 



of a Welter class of houses. He was recently informed that a farmer pasturing 

 cows in a field bordering on the main road lost three of them by death in a very 

 short time, all apparently from the same cause. When the last one died a 

 veterinary surgeon was called in, and on opening the cow he found a hard ball of 

 dust in its stomach, which he declared to be the cause of death, as there was no 

 trace of disease in the animal. This is an extreme case no doubt, but it indicates 

 to what extent motor dust is injurious. Motors are also a nuisance and a danger 

 in passing through villages, especially to the shop-keeping class, and the speed- 

 limit should be much reduced. He did not agree_with the reader of the Paper 

 that roads should be specially provided for this class of pleasure traffic. All 

 (lasses of society should have equal right to the use of public roads for vehicular 

 traffic of every kind, and the rates of the district should not be drawn upon for 

 the exclusive use of a privileged class. In some villages the rates are consider- 

 ably drawn upon for road watering to lay the dust created by the passing motors, 

 and in some instances the surface of the roads is being formed of material not 

 suited to bear heavy loads. No surveyor who understands his profession will 

 make his roads with too much camber. 



Mr. J. A. Longden (Institution of Mining Engineers), referring to the treat- 

 ment of roads, said that tar macadam had come to stop, and that spraying was 

 only a temporary measure. He noticed at Dunkeld a few years ago that tar had 

 been sprayed on the narrow streets, and as it was wet weather, when any vehicle 

 came down the street the tar was splashed right across the footpath, ruining every- 

 body's clothes. Spraying has no doubt been improved since then, but the fact 

 remains that spraying is a mistake unless you have a tar macadam road first, and 

 then a little tar and dust to renew the surface may be beneficial, but he thought 

 that the less spraying there is the better. The dust question in Derbyshire, 

 where the roads are chiefly of limestone, is most serious. Speaking of a conversa- 

 tion he had recently with Sir George Gibb, the Chairman of the Road Board, and 

 Colonel Crompton, the consulting engineer, so far as he could gather they were 

 both of them distinctly in favour of tar macadam. He was afraid the 500,000/. 

 per annum which they have at their disposal will not go very far in putting the 

 roads of Great Britain into good condition, and we shall probably find that this 

 sum, which is derived principally from the use of motor-cars, will be spent in 

 improving the main roads which are used by motor-cars most frequently. 



Mr. J. H. Priestley (Bristol Naturalists' Society) said that a good many plants 

 were not harmed by dust, as the hairs on their leaves protected them. He had 

 also been told by farmers that the ravages of the turnip flea beetle were largely 

 minimised by the dust which drifted over the fields from neighbouring roads. 

 Some tars, or tar-like materials, should not be put down, as they spoilt plant life 

 by vaporisation. An insoluble material should be used. It wa.s desirable that 

 naturalists' societies should show a keen interest in the question of improving the 

 roads, so that vegetation and animal life did not suffer either from the prepara- 

 tions applied to the road or from the traffic using the road, and not simply tako 

 up a conservative attitude and deprecate the inevitable use of motor-driven 

 vehicles in country districts. 



Professor W. W. Watts (Birmingham N. H. and Philosophical Society) said 

 that with the new conditions of road traffic we must revise our ideas. The 

 unskilfully made road, with occasional watering to lay the dust, is now no longer 

 feasible. Again, the road trouble is mainly due to the difficulty of accommodating 

 two classes of traffic, wheel-traction and hoof-traction. The best types of sur- 

 face for the former were not the best for the latter form of traction. The dust 

 nuisance is so great an evil that it must be combated and abolished. Something 

 has been done already, for forty years ago roads were almost as dusty under horse 

 traffic as they now are under motor traffic, and the same observation applied to 

 railways before proper ballast was used. Among the things wanted are (1) proper 

 foundations like those built under the Roman roads; (2) greatly diminished 

 (amber to distribute the traffic, to avoid skidding, and to diminish water erosion ; 

 (3) waterproofing of the surface and a proper binding of the constituents to check 

 grinding and shifting of these materials ; (4) the removal of dust and mud as 

 formed instead of replacing it as 'binding ' to renew the same vicious cycle. 



Principal Griffiths drew attention in the revised use of the roads to the offence 

 to the eyes of the motor-trade advertisements, to which the firms say they are 



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