struction. Wear ensues in a road, even subject to the best maintenance, that requires replacement of materials that is more properly termed repair, although there may not have been neglect in maintenance.

To preserve the condition and serviceableness of any highway will require the addition of materials to its surface in proportion to the losses classified above.

In the care of the improved roads of Europe the plan of prompt remedy of defects, or replacing loss from wear and other causes, so soon as noticeable, has become the universal rule. In this country, however, the opposite rule of delaying repair to that point where its necessity is insistent is almost equally universal. The difference arises largely from the difference in the cost of labor, but it is undoubtedly true that the European method of prompt repair will become more and more the rule in America as the principles of good road maintenance become better known and are fully appreciated on this side.

The greater proportion of the improved roads of Ohio are allowed to continue without attention until travel has brought them to a state in which the surface condition becomes ruinous and unfit for travel. When the destruction of the road surface reaches the stage that remedy can no longer be delayed, loose material is dumped on the surface with no attempt at screening and without system, except perhaps, giving an undue amount of crown to the extent of ridging along the middle of the road. The finer part of the repair in large proportion sinks through the coarse to the old road surface and allows the larger pieces to remain on top, to be avoided in great degree by travel, and when subjected to travel, to be displaced from their proper position, either becoming round from abrasion and from this condition less and less capable of being compacted into a smooth and firm road surface, or else they are knocked into the ditches to interfere with the drainage.

Depressions on their first appearance should have the mud and dust removed and be filled with repair on which enough fine dirt or dust is placed to cement the repair into a solid mass.

If the method of covering the surface with a layer of repair is followed the coarser material should be covered and filled with fines and the whole rolled to a firm and smooth surface, so that travel will compact the mass, rather than round the material and destroy its edges that are necessary to its thorough compaction.

The greater proportion of the limestone roads of Ohio are constructed. by placing loose, unscreened material on the surface. When this method is followed travel produces three hollows along the lines of travel, the center formed by the single horse driving, and one on each side by double teams. Outside of these hollows the wheels form two ruts in the loose stone and conditions are produced ruincus to the good condition of the road. The hollows and ruts leading the travel along the constant lines. and the wheels cutting deeper and deeper ruts that more and more tend to hold the water and interfere with drainage and destroy the road.

On all roads constructed of loose, unscreened material, the hand rake should be used to fill up the hollows and ruts as they form with loose stone from the ridges and especially with that thrown toward the edge of the road, in order that the travel may be distributed evenly over the road and eventually secure a smooth, solid surface.

One of the old methods of macadam construction was to secure the compaction of the material without the use of the roller. The loose material was placed on the surface and whenever it began to rut and firm

under the wheels, hand rakes were used to fill up the depressions. The process placed the larger stone, brought to the surface by travel, along the former wheel tracks and tended to transfer the wheels to a new line until gradually the whole road surface was compact and smooth. It would be found advisable, so long as the method of loose stone construction is followed in any locality, and it is very prevalent in Ohio, to resort to the raking-in method as the best procedure to remedy the defects resulting from improper construction. The raking in is comparatively inexpensive, and although the method of compaction by travel is an expensive one, when measured by loss to horseflesh and vehicles, the latter expense is materially reduced, the condition of the road vastly improved and the slight expense is amply repaid.

The ordinary gravel road is one that requires raking in in order to keep it in condition, and can only be a pleasant and easy driveway by attention in this particular. I refer, of course, to the road constructed of rounded gravel without sharp edges and which cannot be reduced to a permanently solid mass. A road machine should never be used on a macadam surface to secure the filling of the ruts, for the reason that it destroys any bond that may have been attained.

Macadam roads are often destroyed at their termini, and at intersections with clay roads, from having the tenacious clay of the mud roads adherent to wheels passing from the latter to the former, dropped on their surface. This coating of clay inevitably results in a picking-up process, converting the surface into a series of undulations. At intersections and ends of macadam roads where this condition is likely to ensue, three-inch stone may be placed on the surface of the connecting clay road for a distance of eighty or one hundred feet.

This rough surface, greatly more desirable than the muddy clay surface, will cause the wheels to drop their burden of clay, to the preservation of the good condition of the adjacent macadam surface. section of clay road thus treated will eventually be cemented into a good surfaced road.

WIDE TIRES.

A housewife that purchases a fine and costly gown, and then, without any attempt at protection to the same, engages in kitchen or dairy work, will by all be considered very extravagant and foolish. This mistreatment is no more unwise or foolish than to subject a costly and wellconstructed macadam road to the destructive agency of heavily weighted, narrow tires.

Tests have again and again been made that prove, without a doubt, that wide-tired wagons are of lighter traction or draft than those equipped with narrow tires. There is no disputing the fact that a wide-tired wagon on bad roads, rutted by narrow tires, will be of heavy draft, for the reason that the wide tires require force to overcome the conditions due to the action of narrow tires. Part of the expenditure of force required. in moving loads on wide-tired wagons over roads rutted by the use of narrow tires is due to the corrective effect of the broad tires on the bad conditions resultant from use of narrow tires and is properly a credit entry on the side of good roads.

The action of the wide tire, in a measure, takes the place of the improvement resultant from the use of the road roller. Narrow tires on heavily loaded wagons are road destroyers. The same loads carried on wide tires are road improvers.

The concentration of heavy loads, by the use of narrow tires, on a restricted surface, destroys the surface bond and cuts gutters that carry and hold water that softens the road surface and must necessarily but produce and aggravate bad conditions. Wide tires under the same loads compact, smooth and firm the surface. The change from narrow to wide tires is one of moderate cost, well repaid by other conditions and absolutely necessary to the economical maintenance of good roads.

In the forty-five states of the Union at the beginning of the year 1905, seventeen had laws referring to the width of tires on the improved roads of these states. The laws of seven of the states treated the matter from the standpoint of regulation with various penalties for use of unlawful tires. Ten states provide for rebates for the use of tires of proper width, six states by rebates in road taxes and four by rebates from rates of toll. The fact that ten of the seventeen states with laws relating to and recognizing the beneficial effect of wide tires are the ten states that have made the greatest strides in road improvement and state aid, demonstrates that the states having the widest and most extended experience and that have done the most for the improvement of their highways, are the states that have by their statutes recognized the extravagance of the use of narrow tires on improved roads. The improvement of clay roads by the use of wide tires is but secondary to the benefit from their use on improved roads.