288 
STATE AGRICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
amount as to cut the ruts into gullies. When the surface of 
the road has a slope to both sides, the bars should be placed 
opposite to each other in the form of an obtuse Y. The bot¬ 
tom of the Y should be up the grade. There should be no 
gutter excavated in the road surface on the upper side of the 
bars, but the bar should be raised slightly above the road sur¬ 
face. No stones or timbers should be used in the bars; good 
gravel, where obtainable, is the best material. If the bars are 
placed as near each other as they should be on the heavy 
grades, the highest portion of the bars, that is, at the margins 
of the road, need not be more than three inches above the 
level of the surface of the road. On newly constructed roads, 
whether of broken stone, earth or gravel, the water bars need 
frequent and particular attention until they become firm ; in 
fact there is no portion of the road that will give a better 
return for the required outlay of labor than the water bars. 
SHELL EOADS. 
A pleasant and durable road for ordinary light country 
travel may be made on a properly drained foundation, by 
applying shells to the depth of about eight inches, with a 
lateral surface grade of a quarter of an inch to the foot, but 
not sufficiently durable to be profitable for heavy traffic. A 
few years since, one of the main macadamized turnpikes lead¬ 
ing out of Baltimore was repaired over a section of about half 
a mile in length, by dressing the stoned road with shells, 
applied about six inches in thickness. The solid bed of stones 
underneath and the heavy traffic on the surface soon ground 
the shells to powder, and when wet it became a bed of thin 
lime mortar, two to four inches in depth, which was so 
objectionable that the company were obliged to scrape up and 
haul off the whole mass in less than two years after the shells 
were applied. The circumstances described were particularly 
unfavorable for shells, as a test of their durability. The wear 
upon an ordinary carriage road in private grounds is not 
usually sufficient to reduce the shells to a good road in many 
