Turnpike and Parish Roads. 359 



I I ? I 1 I ' 1 I I I I 9 I ! I L 



A. Perfect form of road 28 feet wide. 



B. Usual form of road when shoulders are allowed to remain. 



C. Road-level 13 feet long. 



tills paper if I were to attempt to detail the various prejudices 

 I had to overcome under the head of '^'form of road." Whilst * 

 we were forming one of the first miles with the level according to 

 the above rule, a person came up and introduced himself to me 

 by saying he was a road-surveyor of forty years' experience, and 

 he wondered to see us taking such unnecessary trouble in forming 

 the road before laying on the gravel, as the desired form could be 

 obtained in so doing ; and it was not until I made an experiment 

 with gravel in his presence, by which I proved to him that^ acting 

 on his principle, the gravel would in some places be 6 inches 

 thick, and in adjoining spots not one inch thick, consequently could 

 never wear down and bind well together, and form an equal and 

 elastic body which it is so desirable to obtain, that he had the 

 honesty to admit he had been acting for forty years upon a 

 wrong principle. 



There is a tendency on every road, particularly where the ma- 

 terials are not of the best description, for them to be pushed down 

 towards the water-table, eventually forming the before -mentioned 

 shoulders or humps, and more especially so if the gravel be 

 injudiciously laid on, so as to force the carriage to form two lines, 

 one of each side the centre of the road, instead of the traffic being 

 equalised over the whole surface. To correct this, great care 

 should be taken by the mile-men to rub and rake upwards from 

 the water-table towards the centre of the road, by standing in 

 the middle of the road, and drawing the loose material upwards. 

 There should be one or two of these levels upon every trust or dis- 

 trict of road, so that the sub-surveyor should occasionally, by trving 

 the level, point out to the men the spots where the form has 

 become imperfect,^ and those spots should be corrected during the 

 spring and summer, when the mile-men are not so busy. With 



