PRACTICAL PAPERS—COUNTRY ROADS. 
283 
than longitudinal drainage. The widest track of country 
wagons does not exceed five feet, and, with a slope of one- 
quarter of an inch to one foot, the difference in the height of 
the wheels when the vehicle is on the side of the road, is but 
0 . . . . . 
one and a quarter inch, and this is reversed in returning. It 
often occurs in rural districts that it is practicable to drive a 
large proportion of the distance on the summit of the road bed, 
where the vehicles will be on a level. It is next to impossible 
to prevent road surfaces from rutting to some extent, and a 
“ slope of one in two hundred ” only, while it is so gentle that 
there will be no tendency to wash, will certainly keep surface 
water on the road-bed so long that much of it will be absorbed, 
which may be avoided in lateral drainage, without injury to 
vehicles, displacement of lading, or inconvenience to passen¬ 
gers. It is not practicable to give a rule for the exact amount 
of longitudinal grade of roads, as they are affected by so many 
circumstances. Primarily the best provision for business traffic 
should be considered paramount to all else, yet this has often 
to be modified by local circumstrnces, whether in regarding 
old roads or in locating new ones. In the latter, if the locality 
is mainly unsettled, and the probabilities are that the building 
sites will be most popular near the summits along the line of 
the projected road, the engineer should prospect contiguous 
lands, and so modify the route that the necessary laterals may 
connect with the road by grades that will be easy, safe, and 
inexpensive. 
There has been a very general and striking change in the 
taste evinced in locating rural homes, country seats, and farm 
buildings,-of late, to provide for which a corresponding change 
in the roads bv which they are to be reached has become indis- 
pensible. Formerly, the popular site for rural buildings was 
under the lee of elevated ranges of land, near the streams, or 
springs at the base of the hills, to accommodate which, the 
public roads generally traversed the banks of streams, in which 
position the drainage of all the high lands must pass under or 
over them. The advantages of the modern system are nu¬ 
merous, and the disadvantages few. The salubrity of the high 
