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were laid on stringers, these, in turn, resting on a more or less elaborately made bed. The average cost of plank roads in New York was a trifle less than two thousand dollars per mile. It will be remembered that the Cumberland Road cost on the average over ten thousand dollars per mile in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and three thousand four hundred dollars per mile west of the Ohio River. Its estimated cost per mile, without bridging, was six thousand dollars. It was natural, therefore, that plank roads should become popular—for the country was still a "wooden country," as the pioneers said. It was argued that the cost was "infinitely less—that it [plank road] is easier for the horse to draw upon—and that such a road costs less for repairs and is more durable than a Macadam road. . . On the Salina and Central road, a few weeks back, for a wager, a team [two horses] brought in, without any extraordinary strain, six tons of iron from Brewerton, a distance of twelve miles, to Syracuse [New York]. . . Indeed, the farmer does not seem to make any calculations of the weight taken. He