_Road Making in New York._--In accordance with the policy of the State Prison Department and by means of an appropriation made at the last session of the legislature, the Department has placed groups of convicts from the various State prisons at work improving roads in different parts of the State. The plan will be extended as fast as possible with the available appropriation and it is hoped that some 500 miles of earth road will be improved during the summer. At present there are five convict squads on the roads. Three squads have been sent out from Dannemora. They are all engaged in Clinton County one squad improving a bad stretch of the old military turnpike. Two more squads are out from Great Meadow, one working on the Comstock-Whitehall road and the other on the Ticonderoga-Schroon lake road in Warren county. So far the plan has proved most successful. The convicts are keen for the chance of work in the open air and the result to the counties in which the work is being carried on is gratifying in improved traffic conditions. Several squads have been made up to be sent out from Auburn prison, but an outbreak of scarlet fever in the institution has delayed the plan. As soon as the quarantine is lifted many prisoners will be put to work. By the provisions of the new law the thirty-mile radius from the walls of prisons within which convicts could be engaged in road work has been removed, so that they may be employed in any part of the State. In addition to this, for the first time an appropriation has been made of $50,000 for carrying on the work of improving roads by convict labor. Boards of Supervisors of the various counties are applying to the Prison Department for convicts to improve roads in the counties which are not included in the State macadamized system. Under the plan of Superintendent Riley the $50,000 will be spent in improving earth roads rather than trying to build roads of macadam because of the much greater use of the appropriation. Ten miles of good earth road may be built for the amount required to construct a single mile of macadam where gravel or other proper material for surfacing is obtainable. It also costs less to maintain ten miles of gravel road than one mile of macadam, declares Superintendent Riley. “After the $100,000,000 to which the State is pledged is expended on the State highways there will be a very large percentage of the roads in the State which will not be touched by this expenditure,” said Superintendent Riley. It is for the good of these roads, many of them of the greatest importance, that he wishes to direct the convict road labor particularly. _Hudson Republican, June 8._ NOTES A new county workhouse costing $25,000 has been built at South Range, Wis., on a tract of 160 acres, which will be worked by the prisoners. * * * * * A modified form of self-government has been introduced at the New Jersey State Reformatory at Rahway by Dr. Frank Moore.