Rocks and trees also help; anything that breaks the surface of the snow and shows up the gradient ahead.

The latter is generally used, I understand, to measure the gradients of roads, railways, etc.

Redmire bank was an obstacle to horse traffic, and the road surveyor had plans for easing the gradient that would necessitate cutting down a wood where Osborn's pheasants found shelter.

From the foot of the hill the road zigzags, making a fairly easy gradient to the summit, on which stands a house whose owner kindly allows visitors to walk about his grounds and participate in the view.

As may be seen on Figs. 2 and 3, the method selected for obtaining adhesion permits of ascending the steepest gradients, and that too with entire security.

Over it all we advance, the engine laboring and puffing on one or two heavy gradients, in spite of a full supply of steam, or tearing down the inclines with hardly any, or none at all and the brake on.

1.30, or roughly 1s., and to study it carefully, noticing the contour lines on the well-known Nursery slopes, and gradually realizing the gradient represented by the different widths between them.

Falconer's big automobile, which he kept at the "Camp," ran up the steep gradients without appearing to know that they existed, and Carmen strove to be cheerful, to look as if she were enjoying the drive.

At the head of the valley, the road, a good example of the war work of the Italian Engineers, turned sharply up the hillside, securing tolerable gradients by means of constant zigzagstolerable that is to say for men on foot and for pack mules, for wheeled transport could not proceed beyond this point.

My negotiations being with a company in a town where there are no steep gradients, and where the coefficient of friction of ordinary wheels would be sufficient for all tractive purposes, I thought it better to avoid the complication involved in employing a large central wheel with a broad surface specially designed for hilly districts, and with which I had mounted a gradient of one in sixteen.

I was alone in the compartment, and sat moodily watching the panorama of wood and river as we slowly wound up the tortuous ascents and descended the steep gradients.