Lesley.] 352 [March. 



But as the editions of the county maps are always small, seldom 

 exceeding 1000 copies, and after one or two dozen extra copies have 

 been struck off for the publisher, the stones are always destroyed, 

 they go out of the market, and become extremely difficult to procure. 

 In important cases special agents have to be despatched to the locality 

 to purchase copies from the walls of the farmers' houses, at a high 

 price. 



It would be natural to expect to find complete sets of the county 

 maps of each State in the archives of its capitol. Strange to say, 

 none such is known to exist except at Albany. Stranger still, no set 

 of these maps, no record of all this labor done, is to be seen at the 

 Capitol of the Nation, neither in the Library of Congress, nor in the 

 Bureau of the Interior, nor at the Bureau of the Coast Survey. A 

 few of them, the number amounting perhaps to one-twentieth of the 

 whole, are on file in the Engineer Department of the United States. 

 And yet every day diminishes the chance of making up such a set. 

 AVithin the last two months the editions of thirty have been exhausted. 



In striking contrast to our own conduct, the British Government 

 has possessed itself of a complete set of American county maps, by 

 giving a standing order for each, as it appears, to be sent to the British 

 Museum. Recent orders to send "everything in the map way rela- 

 ting to the United States," took the last copies of the twenty rarest 

 of these county maps. 



For eighteen years, this slow discussion of the boundaries, streams, 

 roads and houses of the surface of the United States, has been carried 

 on by Mr. Smith* and others, with a continually improving organi- 

 zation, and increasing rapidity, until about two-thirds of the well- 

 settled North has been delineated. The fieldwork seems rude to the 

 physicist, engaged in discussing the figure of the earth, and to the chief 

 of a survey of an are of a meridian. But the results are perfectly 

 satisfactory to the naturalist, the county surveyor, the soldier, and 

 the geologist. The latter finds his canvas ready prepared, and can 

 lay in his picture with comfort and success. When larger areas are 

 to be mapped, then astronomical determinations and trigonometrical 

 adjustments come in place. But the compensations which rectify 

 magnetic work in the field, by skilled hands, carefully plotted after- 

 wards in the office, produce results which favorably compare with the 

 most careful triangulation ; and at all events may, if the needs of 

 society call for it, precede, in order of time, just as well as follow, the 

 application of the more accurate methods of the science. 



* R. Pearsall Smith, 517 Minor Street, Philadelphia. 



