a right to work out his road
tax. This surveyor is usually a farmer, who is very busy during
planting-time in the spring, and during the haying and harvesting
seasons; and consequently he works upon the roads between the
planting and the haying seasons, or in the autumn after he has
finished the fall work upon his farm. It sometimes happens that he
works out all the money allowed him in early summer, and then
nothing more is done for a year.

If a road is only to be repaired once a year, the work ought to be
done in the spring, when the soil is moist and will pack together
hard, and not in the summer, when it is dry and turns easily to
dust, nor in the late autumn, when the fall rains make it muddy. The
surveyor generally makes the repairs by ploughing up the road-bed
and smoothing it off a little, or else by ploughing up the dust,
turf, and stones alongside the road-bed, and scraping the same upon
it. After this is done he goes about his farm work.

The stones in the road soon begin to work up to the surface, and
remain there like so many footballs for every horse to kick as he
passes over them. A horse-path naturally forms in the centre of the
road, and wheel-ruts upon either side, which make excellent channels
for the water to run in during every rain-storm. At first the water
finds its way over the water-bars in small quantities; but the
channels increase in depth with every shower, and soon during every
hard rain there are from one to three streams of water running over
the road-bed from the top to the bottom of nearly every hill, and as
a consequence the road is washed all to pieces. The road then
generally remains in this condition until the next fall, and
sometimes until the next spring. When a road is repaired in this
way, it follows as a matter of course that it is in a bad condition
all the year round. Just after repairs the road is wretched, for it
is then in better condition to be planted than to be travelled over;
when trodden down a little, the wash of the rains and the loose
stones make it bad again; it then grows worse and worse until
another general repair makes it wretched again, and so on _ad
infinitum_. The only way to remedy this state of affairs is to
change the system.

There should be only one highway surveyor for the whole town, with
authority to supply such men and teams as may be necessary to keep
the roads in a good state of repair. Let them not only work in the
early summer and fall,