46 The Viagrant. 



drains or other means ; second, no stone in the road to exceed 

 60Z. in weight, or, as he sometimes put it, " any stone you can 

 put in your mouth may go on the road ;" third, cleanness of 

 the metal. Now, none of these points appear to be sufficiently 

 recognised here, while they appear to be still accepted in 

 England, except of course that Telford's system of paving the 

 bottom with large stones first may be used instead of the 

 macadam metalling only. In our neighbourhood the modern 

 practice seems to omit all subsoil drainage ; consequently all 

 the evils of wet roads are multiplied, though in our climate 

 drainage would seem doubly necessary. The grade of road 

 metal used here would seem to be excessively large. Samples 

 of stones from English roads are on the table, which weigh 

 between loz. and 20z., and measure ifin greatest diameter. 

 While English engineers with whom I have spoken seem 

 to be in doubt whether 2in. or 2|in. metal was best, on 

 the Lisburn road the stones (specimens of which are shown) 

 seem to average 3^in., and weigh looz. to I5nz., even 4in. to 

 5in. being not uncommon. A piece of road metal from the 

 Malone Road, some distance within the city boundary, is on 

 the table, measuring sl^in. long and weighing lib. 6oz. In 

 County Down, however, a more reasonable grade of metal is 

 now observable, and it will be generally admitted that the 

 roads in that county are at least somewhat smoother than those 

 in County Antrim This is apparent in the diagrams from the 

 Belfast and SaintfieldRoad exhibited. No excuse for bad roads 

 in the North of Ireland could be oflfeted on account of the 

 inferiority of the material available. Basalt and cranite are 

 both excellent if selected of a tough and wear-resisting quality 

 — a matter perhaps not always attended to. Basalt metalling 

 can be delivered in the neighbourhood of Belfast for little more 

 than 3s per ton, whereas in Cambridge, for example, the 

 granite metalling is said to cost 25s per ton, and in Lancashire 

 the broken syenite used on the Prescot Road costs los to 12s 

 per ton. Referring to the recognised smoothness of the flint 

 roads in England, such as that shown above, I hope that 



