A road-maker should not go to the other extreme and fill up ruts and holes with stone or large gravel. In many cases it would be wiser to dump such material in the river. These stones do not wear uniformly with the rest of the material, but produce bumps and ridges, and in nearly every case result in making two holes instead of one. Every hole or rut in a roadway, if not tamped full of some good material like that of which the road is constructed, will become filled with water, and finally with mud and water, and will be dug deeper and wider by each passing vehicle. The work of maintaining earth roads will be much increased by lack of care in properly finishing the work. The labor and money spent in rolling a newly-made road may save many times that amount of labor and money in making future repairs. After the material has been placed it should not be left for the traffic to consolidate, or for the rains to wash off into the ditches, but should be carefully formed and surfaced, and then, if possible, rolled. The rolling not only consolidates the material, but puts the roadbed in proper shape for travel immediately. If there is anything more trying on man or beast than to travel over an unimproved road, it must be to travel over one which has just been "worked" by the antiquated methods now in vogue in many of the states. The traveled way should never be repaired by the use of plows or scoops. The plow breaks up the compact surface which age and traffic have made tolerable. Earth roads can be rapidly repaired by a judicious use of road machines and road rollers. The road machine places the material where it is most needed, and the roller compacts and keeps it there. The labor-saving machinery now manufactured for road-building is just as effectual and necessary as the modern mower, self-binder, and thrasher. Road graders and rollers are the modern inventions necessary to permanent and economical construction. Two men with two teams can build more road in one day with a grader and roller than fifty men can with picks and shovels, and do it more uniformly and more thoroughly. Doubtless the best way to keep an earth road, or any road, for that matter, in repair is by the use of wide tires on all wagons carrying heavy burdens. Water and narrow tires aid each other in destroying streets, macadam, gravel, and earth roads. Narrow tires are also among the most destructive agents to the fields, pastures, and meadows of farms, while on the other hand wide tires are road-makers; they roll and harden the surface, and every loaded wagon becomes in effect a road roller. Nothing so much tends to the improving of a road as the continued rolling of its surface.