ial (at first sight so little
calculated to bear the wear and tear of an enormous traffic) in the most
eligible manner. The first who commenced an actual piece of paving was a
Mr Skead--a perfectly simple and inartificial system, which it was soon
seen was doomed to be superseded. His blocks were nothing but pieces of
wood of a hexagon shape--with no cohesion, and no foundation--so that
they trusted each to its own resources to resist the pressure of a
wheel, or the blow of a horse's hoof; and, as might have been foreseen,
they became very uneven after a short use, and had no recommendation
except their cheapness and their exemption from noise. The fibre was
vertical, and at first no grooves were introduced; they, of course,
became rounded by wearing away at the edge, and as slippery as the
ancient granite. The Metropolitan Company took warning from the defects
of their predecessor, and adopted the patent of a scientific French
gentleman of the name of De Lisle. The combination of the blocks is as
elaborate as the structure of a ship of war, and yet perfectly easy,
being founded on correct mechanical principles, and attaining the great
objects required--viz. smoothness, durability, and quiet. The blocks,
which are shaped at such an angle that they give the most perfect mutual
support, are joined to each other by oaken dowels, and laid on a hard
concrete foundation, presenting a level surface, over which the impact
is so equally divided, that the whole mass resists the pressure on each
particular block; and yet, from being formed in panels of about a yard
square, they are laid down or lifted up with far greater ease than the
causeway. Attention was immediately attracted to this invention, and all
efforts have hitherto been vain to improve on it. Various projectors
have appeared--some with concrete foundations, some with the blocks
attached to each other, not by oak dowels, but by being alternately
concave and convex at the side; but this system has the incurable defect
of wearing off at the edges, where the fibre of the wood, of course, is
weakest, and presents a succession of bald-pated surfaces, extremely
slippery, and incapable of being permanently grooved. A specimen of this
will be often referred to in the course of this account, being that
which has attained such an unenviable degree of notoriety in the
Poultry. Other inventors have shown ingenuity and perseverance; but the
great representative of wooden paving we ta