l
Knowledge, not to be equal to a strain of more than 62-1/2 lbs., and at
twelve miles an hour to be barely 40 lbs. It is therefore useless to rely
oh horse-power to enable a neighbourhood to retain its advantages in
competition with a railway. To meet this difficulty many ingenious men
turned their attention to the possibility of inventing a steam-engine
applicable to common roads; and although, in several instances, their
experiments succeeded, and many of the difficulties were overcome, still
it is not to be denied that, on the whole, macadamized roads are not
adapted to locomotive machines. Even when the road is in the best possible
condition, the concussion is found so great as materially to interfere
with the action of the machinery; and if the road be slightly muddy, or
sandy, or newly gravelled, the draught will be double, or even treble what
it is on the same road when free from dirt or dust. The author of the
_Treatise on Draught_, accordingly, concludes against the use of
steam-carriages on common roads, chiefly on account of their want of
uniform hardness and smoothness, and the consequent wear and tear of the
coach. "Perfection in a road," he says, "would be a plain, level, hard
surface;" and in another passage--"Hardness, therefore, and consequently
the absence of dust and dirt, which is easily crushed or displaced, is
the grand desideratum in roads."

These opinions were published in 1831, and since that period the
desideratum has been supplied. A method of preparing a road has been
discovered, uniting all the qualities required for the perfection of a
highway. We allude to the system recently introduced of paving a road with
wood. On this smooth and hard surface a steam coach goes more easily than
on iron rails, and the expense of laying it down is trifling in
comparison.

At a meeting of the South-eastern Railway Company in July 1843, a branch
line to Maidstone, ten miles in length, was proposed; and as the directors
were satisfied it would be beneficial to the parent line, they determined
to raise L.149,300, on loan notes or mortgage, to complete it. This gives
an expenditure of L.15,000 a mile, and, judging from the estimate of other
lines, the estimate is exceedingly low. For less than a third of the sum,
the distance could have been laid down in wood without interfering with
the traffic of the present road; for one great advantage of the proposed
method consists in this, that by setting aside a por