Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/130

 form a solid hard surface, and therefore it follows, that when that material is laid upon the road, it must remain in the situation in which it is placed without ever being moved again; and what I find fault with putting quantities of gravel on the road is, that before it becomes useful it must move its situation and be in constant motion.

In order to attain the advantage you allude to in the angular materials, I take it for granted, it is your plan to have the larger pieces of gravel well broken?—Certainly; but I mean further, that in digging the gravel near London, and places where there are vast quantities of loam, and that loam adhering to every particle of the gravel, however small, I should recommend to leave the very small or fine part of the gravel in the pits, and to make use of the larger part which can be broken, for the double purpose of having the gravel laid on the road in an angular shape, and that the operation of breaking it is the most effectual operation for beating off the loam that adheres to the pieces of gravel. There are other cases besides that of gravel, in which I should think it unprofitable to lift a road. The road between Cirencester and Bath is made of very soft stone, and is of so brittle a nature, that if it were lifted it would rise in sand, and there would be nothing to lay down again that would be useful. I should not recommend lifting of freestone roads for the same reason, because it would go so much to sand that there would be very little to lay down again. I will explain what I have done to that road between Cirencester and Bath; I was obliged to lift a little of the sides of the road in order to give it shape, but in the centre of the road, we, what our men call, "shoved it;" it was before in the state which the country people call "gridironed," that is, it was in long ridges with long hollows between, and we cut down the high part to a level with the bottom of the furrows, and took the materials and sifted them at the side of the read and returned what was useful to the centre.