290 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
to use in gutters where vehicles are allowed to run over it, 
particularly in cold weather; but it is admirably adapted to 
use in side gutters for country roads, and is greatly superior to 
any other gutter for carriage roads and walks in private 
grounds. The cost is about two cents per superficial foot more 
than the ordinary stone-pave.d gutter. 
COUNTRY ROAD ENGINEERING. 
Koad engineering, as a profession, has not been sufficiently 
in demand in this country hitherto, to enlist the attention of 
those possessing experience, skill, and a thorough, scientific 
knowledge of the subject. The engineering of new roads and 
the alteration of old ones have generally been done by a land 
surveyor, or some student in railroad engineering, each de¬ 
ficient in a knowledge of the important work he attempts to 
execute; hence the defective character of most of these roads 
throughout the country. Not until the professional engineer 
shall receive greater encouragement to make common road 
engineering, in all its details, more a specialty, will it be more 
skillfully executed, and this encouragement will not be afforded 
Until the masses are made more familiar with the importance 
of the subject. 
There is one important principle in road engineering that 
should always control the grade of the road as far as practi¬ 
cable, and yet it is observed and acted upon only as the excep¬ 
tion instead' of the rule. It is that when a road is to connect 
two points, whether terminal or intermediate, and one is higher 
than the other, the incliuation of the road should, if practi¬ 
cable, continually tend upward in one direction, and the 
reverse in the opposite. Instead of this we have examples all 
over the country where there is a descent, a fall in the grade, 
made up of a number of smaller or larger hills, from the low to 
the high point, that is really greater than the actual elevation 
of the high above the low point. A trifling divergence in the 
direction of the road, and frequently with but a slight increase 
in its length, if any, will almost always remedy this great 
defect; so that a team, in traversing the road from the low to 
