54 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
April 28. 
many new roads there were in the district, and that 
a “new road could not be considered finished and fit for 
| work under three years." These were the very words ho 
j made use of, for a short hand note was taken of them. 
Here, then, are the extremes of the old prejudices in 
regard to new roads. Most people will allow twelve 
inches to the depth of a road, and twelve months to 
; settle before they consider it “finished and fit for work.” 
The surveyor of the roads in the counties of Suffolk 
: and Norfolk has a different way of making new roads; 
and after an experience of twenty-three years, ho taught 
| us the art and mystery of making roads only six inches 
in depth, and to he in a fit state and condition, in three 
\ weeks, for carrying loads of five or six tons in carts, or 
waggons, with narrow wheels, without any more damage 
to the surface of the road than a wheelbarrow would 
make on a good garden walk. We have helped to make 
such a road, and double that stress was laid upon it, or 
ten tons in a load, more than once, before it was two 
months old, and it never flinched in the least degree. I 
The Messrs. Lucas, Brothers, the large building firm 
in London and Norfolk, were the parlies who tided this 
road to this extent, with huge blocks of Caen stone, 
and Sir Charles Barry saw the whole from beginning to 
end. It strikes us very forcibly, that it would be a 
great saving of road money, or rates, in many places 
round London—or, indeed, round any place in England 
■—if the people would employ the Messrs. Lucas to 
make the new roads, or reconstruct the old ones, on the 
concrete system. They can get plenty of Kent or Essex 
chalk, and Aberdeen or Australian granite—the latter 
the cheapest of the two—from the ballast of the return 
vessels in the port of London, to make roads as hard 
and as durable as pitched or paved roads, and, in some 
instances, cheaper than with Wimbledon gravel, in¬ 
deed, we are told that part of the old town of Kingston 
is Macadamized with Australian granite, at a cheaper 
figure than it coidd be done with the best gravel only 
five miles off. 
For those who put faith in The Cottage Gardener, 
it will only be necessary to say, that the Editor has 
pledged his word that these concrete walks are the best 
he ever saw; his very words in the “Dictionary” are, 
“from personal inspection, we can say these are the best 
we ever saw.” 
Late in March, all through April and May, is the best 
time to make concrete walks; four inches, or at most five 
inches is deep enough for any walk whatever. If it is 
to he ten feet wide, and the materials are scarce, or dear, 
, the bottom should be formed into the same shape as the 
walk is to bo finished, or, say two inches higher in the 
middle than at the sides, before any of the materials are 
laid on. The old way of draining the centre of a walk, 
by drawing in the water from right and left, is radically 
\ bad in principle, and will not answer the concrete 
system at all, as the dryer the bottom, the firmer the 
walk, and the longer it will endure. On very heavy clay 
land, where chalk and gravel are dear, burnt clay will 
make an excellent and enduring bottom to a walk, and 
throe inches of the burnt clay should first of all be put 
! in the bottom and he well rolled in dry weather, then 
I two inches of the concrete on the top, this to be well 
rolled also, and to be heavily watered the last thing in 
the evening, then, the following morning, a very thin 
layer of fine sifted gravel, of good colour, should he laid 
on the toj) of the damp concrete, and the roller passed 
over it several times until the good gravel is thoroughly 
imbedded in the concrete, and forms part of it, as it were; 
| when the concrete is very wet, and the good gravel over 
it too thinly put on, the weight of the roller will cause 
the white juice of the concrete to come up through the 
gravel, and that is the best sign. To hide that, put on 
a little more gravel, and roll again, and when the whole 
is dry, in two or three days, a pick could hardly break | 
the surface. 
On light, dry lands, four inches is deep enough for 
walks, and the first two inches at the bottom may be 
laid with any of the rough materials, without chalk 
or lime, and the next two inches in concrete. The 
roller will press this sufficiently to allow a slight coat of 
clean good gravel on the top, without the walk being 
more than four inches deep in the whole. 
The concrete is made with any coarse gravel, with the 
largest stones taken out or broken, five parls or loads, 
and one part of fine chalk, all mixed well together, and 
put on the walk, then well watered. In dry weather, 
this is soon dry enough for the roller. The usual way 
is to begin this in the morning, and water every three 
or four yards in length as soon as the mixture is got in, 
and so on till towards four o’clock in the afternoon, 
when the whole is ready for the roller, or if it is not dry 
enough that day, to keep on till six o’clock, and roll it 
the first thing next morning, and then to put the fine 
gravel on and roll again immediately ; if the concrete is 
too wet it will stick to the roller, and after rolling, if it 
is allowed to get dry before the colouring gravel is put 
on, the fine gravel will not stick to the concrete, so that 
the state of the weather has much to do with the perfect ! 
success of the operation, and wet weather is much 
against it. 
We calculate, generally, that one part, or load, or 
bushel of lime, will go as far in concrete as two parts of 
chalk ; then, instead of five of gravel to one of chalk, we 
allow ten of gravel to one of lime, but that is the ex¬ 
treme ; when lime or chalk is to be had cheap, more of 
both should he used than these proportions. We have 
used as much chalk as one part for three parts of gravel; 
and one of the best walks we ever saw had more than a 
yard deep of clean chalk in the bottom, because the 
chalk was at hand, and the bottom Soil was more useful 
in filling up round about—and on the top of the chalk- 
less than two inches of the concrete.' In all such cases, 
however, the first frost next autumn blistered the chalk, 
and caused it to rise through the surface in icicles; but 
after the frost, when the walk got dry, the roller settled 
the whole down again, and after that, we never knew 
the frost to affect it any more. The same blistering 
takes place when the concrete is made too fat, as they 
say, that is, when too much chalk or lime was used for 
the proportion of gravel. In such cases it was found 
