Excerpt from Road and Footpath Construction: Macadamised Roads; Stone, Wood, and Asphalt Paving; Footpaths Thomas Telford, at that time Engineer to the Commissioners of Highland Roads and Bridges, first put into practice the principle of modern road construction, namely, that of providing a solid foundation, a principle directly opposed to the first and the fifth of the statements of Macadam. Time has shown the value of Telford's methods. With regard to route and inclination, the ideal road, from the practical point of view, is that which connects two points in the straightest direc tion and is nearly level throughout its entire length. Such an ideal, is not, however, likely to be realised in any except very short roads. There are often so many considerations of varying level in the ground, and there is the cost of disposing of excavated material, or the desirability of approach ing some intermediate point, that the preliminary determination of the route of a new road of any extent is a matter calling for much judgment and entailing a great many compromises between the desirable and the practicable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.