having been put down during the past season. They are laid as closely as possible on a concrete foundation, with a sand cushion of one inch, and the joints filled with paving cement, composed of ten per cent of refined Trinidad asphalt and ninety per cent of coal-tar distillate, after which the surface is covered with half an inch of clean coarse sand or granite screenings. [Illustration: A NEW CEDAR BLOCK PAVEMENT IN TORONTO.] Improved wood pavements are a luxury. They have many points of superiority over asphalt. They are so considered in London, where their use is continued, although they require renewal oftener than asphalt, and much more often than granite. They will undoubtedly be used more frequently in this country when the people are willing to pay the additional cost for the quiet and freedom from dust and from the somewhat disagreeable glare of asphalt. For a dozen years or more brick has been used for street pavements in the cities of the middle West. The use of this material is by no means new. It began in Holland in the thirteenth century, and in the seventeenth century the highway from The Hague to Scheveningen was paved with brick. In Amsterdam such pavements are said to last from ten to twenty years, or an average of fourteen years. After about ten years they are commonly turned over and relaid, after which they will last about four years more. The size in common use is about the same as that made in this country. A good paving brick should be tough enough to withstand the wear to which a street surface is subjected without chipping or cracking, and should not absorb more than from two to four per cent of its weight of water after submersion for forty-eight hours. It has not the wearing qualities of granite, although there is one block on Ninth Avenue, in the Borough of Manhattan, which has been subjected to very heavy traffic for eight years, has had no repairs to speak of, and its condition to-day compares very favorably with almost any street pavement of equal age which has been subjected to similar traffic. [Illustration: AN OLD CEDAR BLOCK PAVEMENT.] Another kind of street improvement which must be considered is macadam. In small towns, and some quite large cities, most of the streets are improved in this way. When well maintained and kept smooth, but not too hard, it forms a most agreeable surface for driving. It should not, in the writer's judgment, be classed as a pavement at all, certainly not as a permanent one, and its use should be restricted to park drives and boulevards (for maintaining which liberal appropriations can be secured), and to suburban roads, where sewers and subsurface pipes have not yet been laid, and where temporary roads are required to furnish convenient communication between centers of population, and to assist in developing these districts.