CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 423 



He was the founder of this Conference, and its first Chairman, in 1880, ever 

 since which time he has aided greatly in its progress and organisation 

 and he was President in 1917. 



This was seconded by the Rev. J. 0. Bevan and carried. 



The Secretary, reported that the Kent's Cavern Committee had met, that 

 Sir W. Boyd Dawkins had been added to this number, that over £100 had been 

 received as donations, and that steps were being taken to ascertain whiit was 

 feasible in the matter. 



The President then read his Address as follows : — 



Roads Ancient and Modern. By Brigadier- General Lokd Montagu, 

 A.I.C.E., A.M.I.C.E. {Member of the Road Board, Adviser on 

 Mechanical Transport Services in India). 



I make no excuse for selecting roads as the subject of my address to you 

 to-day. Roads are now, as ever, a good general test of the degree of civilisation 

 to which a nation has attained, and at the moment in the United Kingdom com- 

 pared with railways they are of equal, if not of greater, importance to the 

 country. 



I do not propose in this address to deal at any length with the comparative 

 merits of roads and railways, or with recent controversies in regard to the new 

 Ministry of Transport, more than to say that amongst the majority of road 

 lovers and road usere, the placing of roads under the domination of a Ministry 

 composed almost entirely, of railway officials is a retrograde step. In reference 

 to this point it should be remembered that railways have only existed for the 

 short period of about eighty to ninety years. Now, with much altered conditions, 

 especially with the recent increase in the coet of labour employed by railways, 

 and therefore the cost of handling of goods, it is doubtful whether railways can 

 without artificial help given in the form of subsidies or otherwise, hope to 

 retain a considerable proportion of the traffic which they have been accustomed 

 to carry. For many purposes road transport in this small island of ours will 

 be in the future the cheapest and mo.st convenient method of cari-ying passengers 

 and goods. We are, however, in a transition stage, and nothing but practical 

 everyday experience and economic facts can decide how much traffic is to be 

 road borne or railway borne. It is to be hoped that the new Ministry will show 

 signs of rising above the pro-railway bias with which it is credited, and realise 

 not only the nature of roads and road transport, but the political and social 

 importance of roads as compared with other means of transport. 



The history of road development is long and interesting. In the earliest 

 historical times, the means of communication were probably mere foot tracks 

 across deserts, through jungles, and over mountains. In many, cases the tracks 

 of large wild animals, such as elephants, buffalo, and deer, formed the only 

 path along which the human being could go, and proof of this is to be seen 

 to-day in certain countries where thick jungle still exists, and where these 

 animal-made paths form regular paths for human beings as well. This may be 

 considered to be the earliest and first stage in the history and development of 

 roads and locomotion upon them. 



The second stage may be said to have begun when pack animals began to be 

 used, and horses, donkeys, mules and oxen were driven along the footpaths by. 

 primeval man, who had tamed these animals and made them useful in the 

 conveyance of himself and hie goods. These early pack roads were often made 

 over swampy places by means of logs or brush wood, and primitive bridges over 

 streams consisted of the trunks of fallen trees. Then there were roads over rocky 

 passes, like the Buddhist paths in Northern India, which were made by heating 

 the rock underneath by. wood fires and then pouring water upon it so that 

 it split and disintegrated. Some of these early paths hewn out of the rock — 

 the Malakand path, for instance — can be seen to-day, well engineered with 

 a more or less even gradient, leading from one valley over the watershed to 

 another, or up to the remote forests of the higher Himalayas. 



After this period we come to the third stage in roads, when it occurred to 

 man to place upon the path or track stones or gravel, or earth, taken from near 



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