130 



THE BOULEVAEDS. 



the relief of the ears of the inhabitants of the streets in 

 which it existed — nearly all the important new boulevards 

 have a considerable breadth on each side well paved for 

 heavy waggon transit. This prevents the larger mac- 

 adamized portion in the centre from being cut up by the 

 heavy traffic of Parisian streets^ and leaves it free for 

 carriages and the lighter kinds of traffic. In some of the 

 older and narrower streets, in which there is not very much 

 traffic, asphalte has taken the place of paving stones — mak- 

 ing a road that is almost noiseless ; but its chief use is in 

 the formation of the wide and excellent footways that 

 border all the new streets and boulevards. 



Asphalte has long been used in Paris for two reasons : 

 first, the supply of good paving stone, similar in quality to 

 our York stone, is scarce, and the few quarries that do 

 yield it are far distant from the capital ; and secondly, the 

 peculiar bituminous sandstone from which the asphalte 

 pavement is made, is cheap and abundant. 



Bad attempts at laying asphalte produce such very dis- 

 agreeable results that the very name must be dreadful to 

 some people ; but in a sloppy climate the advantage of 

 having in all weathers dry, smooth, and permanent footways, 

 instead of cloggy, saturated gravel or mud, is so great that 

 some account of the best system of laying this material 

 cannot fail to be useful. Some years ago asphalte pro- 

 duced a regular industrial fever, and pavements were made 

 in all directions in Paris and London, of any material that 

 at all resembled it. Gas tar, wood tar, pitch, and all sorts 

 of nastiness were ground up with stone, and laid down with- 

 out proper preparation; the consequence of which was that 

 a large number of failures took place, and asphalte pave- 

 ments (at least in this country) were very soon completely 

 tabooed by all good architects. 



Bituminous limestone occurs naturally in many parts of 

 the world, notably at Val de Travers, in the canton of 

 Neufchatel, Switzerland, and at Pyrimont, near Seyssel, a 

 small town in the department of Ain, on the right bank of 

 the Rhone. The asphalte rock from Pyrimont consists of 

 pure limestone impregnated with about 10 per cent, of fossil 



