THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
77 
GRAVEL WALKS AND ROADS. 
X the very humid and comparatively sunless climate of 
England, nothing conduces more to the enjoyment of a 
country residence than a good, firm, and dry walk, upon 
the surface of which the ladies of a family can, without 
annoyance from dirt or damp, take their daily exercise. To 
be what it ought, it should be available immediately a heavy shower 
has ceased; and to this end it i3 desirable to get a hard, smooth 
surface, and to carry off the surface water by frequent gratings to 
an underground drain, not allowing it to saturate the materials of 
which the walk is composed, or the ground on which it rests, be- 
cause in proportion to the absorbency of the materials will be the 
unsoundness of the walk after severe frosts. Both road-making and 
walk-making are frequently ill understood by those who attempt it. 
In the ordinary course of proceeding, to form a road or walk, it 
is usual to make a deep excavation, which, when filled, as is usual, 
with a large and coarse gravel, becomes a receptacle for the drainage 
of the adjacent ground, thus securing the greatest evil which can 
happen, by the constant saturation of its foundation. A better plan 
is to raise the edges of it above the adjoining surface which keeps 
it dry. 
It is necessary that there should be six inches in thickness of 
gravel, for otherwise, however firm and good the surface might be, 
the worms would cast through and disfigure it. 
Nothing can be a worse practice than the employment of large 
bodies of rounded pebbles at the bottom of a road or walk. 
After all, it is the native soil which carries the road, and if this 
is covered or roofed with materials which exclude the surface water, 
it will last — four inches of hard materials is sufficient ; if pebbles, 
they should be broken so as to form a compact, solid body, which 
they do when angular. Rounded pebbles, independently of the 
facilities which their interstices afford for the lodgment of water, 
are ever rising upwards; when pressed upon any point of their cir- 
cumference, they move and become wedged by" the falling of finer 
materials around them ; and as this is always going on, in time thev 
get to the surface, making it rough and uneven. In no instance 
should any great amount of convexity be given to the surface of a 
walk ; its crown should not be raised above the level of the margins. 
If the water will just fall to the sides where the gratings are placed, 
it is all that is necessary. Its outline cannot be too accurately 
defined ; it is avowedly a work of art, and should have the impress 
of the nicest artistical execution in all its details. 
However good the material which forms the face of the walk may 
be, the action of the atmosphere, alternate frosts and rain, will in 
time decompose the surface, in the same manner as it decomposes 
the hardest rocks, and by its slow but sure agency effects vast 
changes in the surface of the earth. The particles of earth absorb 
water, they expand by freezing, and when they thaw become soft 
and friable, presenting a fit nidus for lichens, mosses, etc., to vege- 
March. 
