Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/213

 seven and eight feet; these prevent the water from falling into the side-drains; they also throw a considerable shade upon the road itself, and are gross and unpardonable nuisances. The materials, instead of being cleansed of the mud and soil with which they are mixed in their native state, are laid promiscuously upon the road; this, in the first instance, creates an unnecessary expense of carriage to the road, and afterwards nearly as much in removing it, besides inconvenience and obstruction to travelling; the materials should therefore be cleansed on the spot where they are procured, from every particle of earth, by screening, or if necessary, even by washing; some additional expense might in the first instance be incurred by these operations, but it would be found by much the most economical and advantageous mode in the end. In all cases, materials in their native state are composed of particles and pieces of different sizes, it is most important that those should be separated, and that the largest size should be reduced to not more than six or eight ounces in weight, and laid in the bottom part of the road; those that are under that weight or size may be laid on the top or surface of the road; the surface itself should be made with a very gentle curve in its cross section, just sufficient to permit the water to pass from the centre towards the sides of the road, the declivity may increase towards the sides, and the general section form a very flat ellipsis, so that the side, at the time, should (upon a road of about thirty feet in width) be nine inches below the surface in the middle. Connected with the cross section are the side drains which are to receive the water, and which drains, in every instance, I particularly recommend to be on the field-side of the fence, with apertures in that fence for the water to pass from the sides of the road into them.

The fences themselves on each side form a very material