have an earth wearing surface they are raised by the use of broken stone; but where they are improved with macadam, bituminous surfaces, or brick, a brick surface is used. Bituminous concrete by the penetration method and Portland cement concrete have both been employed; but under the conditions prevailing here, neither has proved satisfactory. The former requires a heavy roller to give good results, and the size of the contract will not warrant this; and the latter should be kept free from travel for a longer period than is required to complete all the rest of the job. Our practice on small bridges, in all cases where the traffic cannot be readily diverted, is to cut the old floor in half and put in the new stringers and nailing pieces on one side. A temporary floor is then laid on this side, and the stringers and nailing pieces are put in on the other side. The new floor can then be laid without serious interruption to vehicle-traffic. Foot-traffic is maintained continuously. We use 5" X 3 1/2" X 3/8"-angle wheel-guards 10 inches above the floor in all through, plate-girder bridges in place of wooden wheel-guards.

A complete itemized record of the repairs on each floor should be kept in the office. A brief summary of this, giving the date and extent of the repairs, should be prepared and placed in the hands of the inspector for the annual inspection in the spring or early summer. This is especially important in the case of ordinary plank floors. When the inspection is made, any accumulation of mud or dirt should be cleaned from the floor, which should then be carefully examined for needed repairs. Ordinarily it is difficult to detect decay in the top of the stringers, until the hard, sound shell on the outside breaks down. If the inspector has the date when the stringers were put in, his experience will tell him when he needs to expect this kind of failure; and planks should then be taken up to make sure.

Records kept in this manner enable the person in charge to have definite knowledge of the conditions in the field; and an inspection made with such information at hand forestalls many floor failures which otherwise frequently occur.

(C) Painting

We have found that our painting is best done by day labor with paint furnished by the owner. It frequently happens that parts of the bridge need to be only touched up at various points for the first coat, in order to give a uniform surface over the whole bridge; and the extent of such work cannot well be specified in advance. Cleaning is fully as important as the painting; in fact paint applied over rust, scale, or dirt is worse than wasted, for it may prevent the real conditions from showing and thus foster further corrosion. With a good, conscientious foreman, the cleaning can be made more thorough than is usually possible under any inspector with contract work. At this point it might be well to observe that many detailers seem to forget all about maintenance, and especially about cleaning and painting, when the drawings  are  made.  Clearances  are  too  small,  and  exposed  metal