470 • KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
The tube will be composed of concrete and cast-iron, there being placed 
every four feet in length of road of double track, two cast yokes which carry the 
stringers upon which the rails are laid, and also the slot-rails between the tracks 
These yokes each weigh 300 pounds. 
RURAL ENGINEERING. 
REV. ALBERT E. WELLS. 
But little attention, of late years, has been paid the subjects of the following 
article, concerning roads, bridges, open drains and water courses. It is true the 
State Legislature have something to say every session about roads and bridges, 
and in the interest of sportsmen may enact laws forbidding seining or trapping 
fish in the smaller rivers and streams. 
We hear nothing now of canals, and slack water navigation, nor is mention 
made of "the levels" of either streams or roads. The importance of railways, 
as opening vast areas to settlement and trade, has, for the time being, crowded 
out of attention the items of use, comfort and beauty, as they might be developed 
by a careful attention to local needs and facilities. In our want of a way to the 
great markets, we have slighted the lesser one of a way to the nearest railway 
station. It is easy to go from there to Chicago, St. Louis, or Kansas Citv, or to 
send 1,000 tons of freight to any of these markets; but how about reaching the 
nearest station either in person or with the 1,000 tons of freight from a farm 
fifteen miles distant? especially during the annual "mud blockade" that 
besieges nearly every town. In calling attention to these subjects and the pro- 
blems lying back of them I am near the interests of every one in our western 
land. 
ist. Of present methods. The General Government devotes a great deal 
of time and valuable franchises and public domain to great railway corporations ; 
but pays no attention to common roads. It also devotes both time and money 
to navigable rivers and notably to their banks with a view to the well-being of 
the people living near them. And though under its command is one of the ablest 
corps of civil engineers in the world, the attention of that corps is not devoted to 
the set of subjects here mentioned, though they have no small bearing upon those 
that have hitherto baffled their skill. 
The State relegates the subject of roads and bridges to the county authorities, 
and also that of drains, with some directions about the election of road-masters, 
and the legal steps for obtaining and paying for a right of way, and the method 
of constraining the neighbors to work or pay the road-tax, or of compelling an 
unwilling farmer to grant a ditch across his farm. In some States it is made the 
duty of the county clerk to keep a record of these road-grants in a separate book, 
in others these things are passed into the record book. 
The county authorities grant the right for a public road on a petition of 
