Road Making At South Kingston, R. I.

In a letter recently written by Senator Lanphear, engineer of the macadam road committeo of South Kingston, R. I., he snid: "First, of course, the road must be graded or the surface of the old road must be brought to aome true grade before the road metal or broken stone ia applied. In the town of South Kingston the town council establishea the grade of the roads, which grade is shown on profile maps recorded by the town clerk of the town and kept on file in hia office. Thi9 work alone is of more benefit than usually considered. Nearly all our village and country roads have no established gTade, the hills and hollows being fftled or lowered as each successive roadmaster thinks for the best. How often have we seen earth carted up hill to make the hills higher, and sometimes silt taken from the foot of the hill to do it with. "Ingoingover profiles of old, unimproved highways, and before any grades had been established, it has seemed singular that little improvements in the grade had not been made before, as often the taking off but little from ono hill top and taking the material to lower ground changes the grade from 12 to 8 per cent. Also, long stretches of undulatiug roads are coinpletely changed by simply taking off the higher surfaces and filling the lower ones. "In putting on the road metal we follow the usual speciñcations used in building macadam roads, using stones not over three inches in any diameter and keeping out all sand and silt. The surface is finally compacted with the heavy steam roller or corrugated horee roller, all low places which come in it by rolling are filled up to grade, surplus materials carted olï and the work is finally accepted by the committee and paid for by the town. The result derived is satisfactory to the taxpayera of the town; the usually consorvative element, the owuers of muny farms, are almost a unit in favor of extending the system to reach remote parta of the town. Of courso it costa large sums of money to make these improvements, but there seeias littlo uuwüliiigness to f uruish it wheu the result isso satisf actory . "