68 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Feb.. 
PLANK ROADS. 
Next to the direct improvement and good cultivation 
of the soil itself, there is perhaps nothing more essen¬ 
tial to rural prosperity than good roads. The constant 
and important bearing which they have on the farmer’s 
convenience and comfort, in marketing products, in the 
multifarious business which he must yearly transact, in 
collecting information, in social intercourse, and in short, 
in every thing which leads him off his own farm,—render 
their improvement highly worthy the attention of every 
patriotic and public spirited man. 
A fine M’Adam road is usually considered the most 
perfect road for the use of the people at large. But 
perfect as this is, well made plank roads are better, and 
incomparably cheaper. M’Adam roads often cost thirty 
thousand dollars per mile. Fine plank roads may be 
made for one-twentieth part of that sum. 
Much valuable information on the construction of 
plank roads, is given in a late communication to the 
Syracuse Daily Star, by George Geddes, ofFairmount, 
Onondaga Co., N. Y., who superintended, as engineer, 
the construction of twelve miles of such road in that 
county, the past year. A few of the principal items 
can hardly fail to be interesting. 
A single track consists of a plank floor eight feet wide, 
the upper surface of which is even and level with the sur¬ 
face of the road on each side. Where there is not an ex¬ 
traordinary amount of travel, one track is enough, no diffi¬ 
culty whatever occurring in turning out on the level 
earth, if it is of hard and compact material. The plank 
is three or four inches thick, laid crosswise of the road, 
on sills four inches square, imbedded in the earth. The 
earth must first be made mellow and fine, and even with 
the top of the sills, so that when the plank is laid on, there 
shall be no vacancies beneath. This latter requisite is 
of great importance to the preservation of the plank; 
as after a series of years, decay has been found to exist 
only at those points where the earth below did not touch 
the plank. The plank keeps its place without any fas¬ 
tening. The ends must not be laid even, otherwise the 
wheels of the vehicle will be apt to slide along the edge, 
in the attempt to regain it, after passing off in meeting 
teams. Perfect drainage is highly important. Where 
the amount of travel is moderate, three inch plank is 
thick enough,- wfiiere it is great, four inch is best. It 
is much better for such roads to wear out than to rot 
out , hence the tolls should be low, to invite travel.— 
The Canada roads are made of three inch pine plank, 
and usually last about eight years. 
The cost per mile, of the road already spoken of, was 
as follows: — 
Sills, 4 in. sq. 14080 feet, at $5 pr. 1000,. $ 70 40 
8 feet width plank, 3 inch, 126720 ft. “ 633 60 
Laying and grading, SI per rod. 320 00 
Engineer, superintendence, &c , 10 per ct. 102 00 
Gate houses, about. 100 00 
Add for 4 in. road, 1226 ft. 211 00 
Sluices, bridges, contingencies,. 63 00 
$1500 00 
Being made on the site of an old road, the right of way 
eost nothing. The stock cannot now be purchased at 
par. The work was all done by the day, by which some 
thousands of dollars were saved on the twelve miles. 
The plank should be of pine or hemlock, or some wood 
not easily warped. 
A single quotation from the communication, as to the 
value of such roads :— u I have seen a M’Adamized road 
taken up, eight feet in width, to make room for a plank 
track—and men who have travelled over the best roads 
in England, say there is not in Great Britain as good a 
road as the Salina Plank Road.” T. 
Industry. — 11 There is more fun in sweating an hour, 
than in yawning a century.” 
AGRICULTURE IN CONNECTICUT. 
We are indebted to Wm. Makinster, Esq., of 
Middletown, Ct., for copies of the reports of Committees,. 
for the Middlesex County (Ct.) Agricultural Society, 
at its last exhibition, and also for a copy of the address 
delivered on that occasion, by Prof. John Johnston. 
Judging from these documents, which we have no 
doubt are good evidence in the case, the state of agri¬ 
culture in that section must be improving. The report 
of the committee on farms, of which Mr. Makinster 
was chairman, speaks of several farmers who have re¬ 
claimed considerable ground by under-draining. Mr. 
Asa Hubbard, is stated to have reclaimed several 
acres by draining. “ Some few of the drains,” it is 
said, 11 are open; but they are generally under-ground 
drains, so constructed that the ground can be plowed 
without injury to them; in short, no one would know 
that there were any drains if the outlets were not seen. 
He has so constructed one of the main drains as to car¬ 
ry the water round the margin of the lot, and thus 
water a strip of land about two rods wide, which pro¬ 
duces twice as much grass per acre as the remainder of 
the field.” 
Bone manure is stated to have been used with very 
favorable results by Mr. Andrew Coe, of Middlefield. 
It is said—“ he has improved his land and raised good 
crops where but little would have grown without ma¬ 
nure, by using bone-dust. He uses from 10 to 50 
bushels per acre, and his crops, this season, show to 
the satisfaction of the committee, that money for the 
purchase of bone-dust, as a top-dressing for grain or 
roots, is well laid out.” 
The principal departments of the show, appear to 
have been well filled; the cattle, in particular, are spo¬ 
ken of as having been of superior quality. Among the 
successful competitors for premiums, we notice the fre¬ 
quent recurrence of the name of Coe, and on a particu¬ 
lar examination, we find that nineteen persons of this 
name received fifty-seven premiums at this exhibition. 
Verily, “ what’s in a name?” 
Of the address of Prof. Johnston, it may be said, 
without intending a puff, that it is of a high character, 
abounding in sound views in regard to the principles of 
Agriculture, the physiology of plants, and the compo¬ 
sition and action of soils. We should be glad to fur¬ 
nish a more extended notice of it, together with some 
extracts, but our limits will not admit of our doing this 
at present. 
FACTS AND OPINIONS, 
Condensed, from Various Exchange Papers . 
Three Crops a Year. —Amos Charlton, of Chelms¬ 
ford, Mass., who sells several hundred dollars worth of 
farm and garden products from a little more than 20 
acres of land, tried an experiment in planting beans with 
early potatoes, which he says has more than answered 
his expectations. After plowing and hoeing the pota¬ 
toes, the beans were planted between the rows, in hills 
twenty inches apart, and hoed once without plowing. 
The potatoes were dug at midsummer, and sold for a 
dollar per bushel. The potato ground was then sown 
with turneps, thus giving a third crop. 
Ashes and Plaster for Manure.— J. Johnston, 
of Geneva,-says that on his soil, which is a gravelly 
clay, one bushel of plaster will do more good to his clo¬ 
ver than 40 bushels of ashes—and that on muck soils 
he never perceived any benefit from plaster, though 
ashes may be useful. All the experiments we have 
tried on sandy and gravelly loam, show the superiority 
of plaster to ashes, applied to grass lands. J. John¬ 
ston also says, that he has found the best way of ap¬ 
plying stable manure in autumn, is to spread it over 
the surface, and plow it in the next spring. This en- 
