Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE ROAD AND THE ROADSIDE. By BURTON WILLIS POTTER. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1886. _Copyright, 1886_, BY BURTON WILLIS POTTER. UNIVERSITY PRESS: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE. TO THE HONORABLE JOHN E. RUSSELL, SECRETARY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, These Pages are Respectfully Inscribed, AS A TOKEN OF MY LOVE AND ESTEEM FOR HIM AS A TRUE FRIEND, A CLASSICAL SCHOLAR, AND AN ELOQUENT ORATOR, WHOSE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS HAVE AIDED POWERFULLY IN BRINGING ABOUT A REVIVAL OF AGRICULTURE, AND IN CREATING AMONG THE PEOPLE A LOVE OF AGRICULTURE AND RURAL LIFE. Transcriber's Note: The asterisks in footnotes 89 and 92 have do not have corresponding references in the text. PREFACE. The chapters of this book relating to the laws of public and private ways were written and read as a lecture at the Country Meeting of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, in December, 1885, at Framingham, and have since been published in the "Report on the Agriculture of Massachusetts for the Year 1885." The laws as herein stated are, as I believe, the present laws of Massachusetts relative to public and private ways, and therefore they may not all be applicable to the ways in other States; but inasmuch as the common law is the basis of the road law in all the States, it will be found that the general principles herein laid down are as applicable in one State as in another. Believing that good roads and the love of rural life are essential to the true happiness and lasting prosperity of any people, these pages have been written with the sincere desire to do something to improve our roads and to encourage country life; and they are now given to the public with the hope that they will exert some little influence in promoting these objects. B. W. P. WORCESTER, MASS., _May, 1886_. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. HISTORY, IMPORTANCE, AND SIGNIFICANCE OF ROADS. PAGE