IMPORTANCE OF CULVERTS,

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXII, Issue 307, 26 January 1894, Page 8

IMPORTANCE OF CULVERTS,

When Properly Made, They Save Much Time* Trouble and Money. \ This question of culverts is really quite an important one. since they bear almost the came rela<L:i to roads that keystones do to arches. Culverts made by putting together jointed cement or glazed earthenware pipes are the most satisfactory, being easier handled and comparatively inexpensive, and when laid a certain distance below the surface tun little or no danger of being broken. But to obviate this they should be laid iiagonally across the road, which pre-

vents the weight of wagons from bearing upon it with two wheels at once and also gives them a better fall. On hills H? is advisable to lay some 8-inch pipes at reasonable * distances apart, dividing up the gutters into short runs instead of attempting to give the mass of water free flow down the entire bill. A short steep hill needs only a single pipe placed near the foot of the hill. These culverts havo one advantage over all others — namely, a concave bottom, with a smooth glazed surface, which allows the water to rush through so freely that it carries all obstructions before it and permits no rubbish to choke up the pipes. These require no further attention than a slight examination every spring to see if the frost has cracked a joint or the übiquitous country boy has taken it upon himself to stop up the opening by stuffing small stones into it. When carefully built, stone culverts are not bad, but they are expensive to make well, and as a rate their sides are laid up so carelessly in dry walls of such Bxnall sized stones that they are liable to upheave and be thrown down by frost. Moreover, the flat stones laid across the top are often so badly dressed and fitted together that the gravel covering them ! keeps sifting thrpugh the cracks, filling ap the culvert and exposing holes on top, which are either chinked up with cobblestones of left bare until some horse gets hurt and a row is made, with the only result that more earth is spread ever, and the same process is kept up ad infinitum. Left entirely to himself, the native roadmaster prefers a more primitive culvert of his own make, which has the enormous merit in his eyes of being; cheap, quick and easy of construction. * His method, delightfulin its simplicity, conBists in digging a trencli across the road and bridging it over with a few split green chestnut rails cut by the roadside, which are afterward covered with earth or sod heaped above the level of the road in such a manner as to make a disagreeable "break." Besides its liability to become choked and useless, this sort of culvert is particularly objectionable because it is always neglected and forgotten, being left to rot until at last some horse's foot crashes through it, and the driver may i consider himself lucky if the animal et> capes with nothing worse than a slight wrench or scratch. During harvest, when it is almost impossible to get men to do any continuous work hot connected with farming, to save time we are sometimes obliged to put in a temporary box culvert, made of planks nailed, together like a long narrow box open at both ends. These culverts are a Blight improvement on the local ones made from chestnut rails, inasmuch as. being quite flat on top, they do not destroy the road's level surface, but unless care is taken to have them made of oaken planks they rot out even more quickly than the others. — Harper's.