GEOGRAPHY. 545 



Admiralty charts, and will henceforth be used in all publications of the 

 society. 



1. No change will be made in the orthography of foreign names in 

 countries which use Eoman letters : thus Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, 

 &c., names will be spelt as by the respective nations. 



2. Neither will any change be made in the spelling of such names in 

 languages which are not written in Eoman character as have become 

 by long usage familiar to English readers ; thus Calcutta, Cutch, Cele- 

 bes, Mecca, &c., will be retained in their i)resent form. 



3. The true sound of the word as locally pronounced will be taken as 

 the basis of the spelling. 



4. An api^roximation, however, to the sound is alone aimed at. A 

 system which would attempt to represent the more delicate inflections 

 of sound and accent would be so complicated as only to defeat itself. 

 Those who desire a more accurate j)ronunciation of the written name 

 must learn it on the spot by a study of local accent and peculiarities. 



5. The broad features of the system are that vowels are jironounced 

 as in Italian, and consonants as in English. 



C. One accent only is used, the acute, to denote the syllable on which 

 stress is laid. This is very important, as the sounds of many names are 

 entirely altered by the misplacement of this stress. 



7. Every letter is pronounced. When two vowels come together each, 

 one is sounded, though the result when spoken quickly is sometimes 

 scarcely to be distinguished from a single sound, as in ai, an, ei. 



8. [East] Indian names are accepted as spelt in Hunter's Gazetteer. 

 On the 11th of September occurred the centenary of the foundation 



of the well-known geographical establishment of Justus Perthes, of Gotha. 

 The committee of the Geography Section of the British Association, 

 which was in session at Aberdeen at the time, sent a telegram of hearty 

 congratulation and good wishes for the future to the head of the estab- 

 lishment. All the professors of geography at the German universities 

 united in presenting to the firm a beautifully illuminated address, ex- 

 pressing their sense of the services rendered to geography by the firm 

 during its long career. A handsome quarto volume has also been issued 

 from Gotha for private circulation, giving a very interesting sketch of the 

 progress of the establishment under its various heads, brief biographies of 

 the famous cartographers connected with it, and notes on the various 

 great works in geography which it has produced. The work contains nu- 

 merous portraits both of the partners and cartographers of the past. The 

 founder of the firm was Johann Georg Justus Perthes, who was born at 

 Eudolstadt, September 11, 1749, his father being i^hysician to the Prince 

 of Eudolstadt. When the firm was first established in Gotha in 1785, 

 its publications were of a general character. In 1809 the great Rand- 

 Atlas ilber alle helcannte Lander des Urdhodens, by Professor Heusin- 

 ger, of Dresden, was published, with twenty-four maps in copper plate. 

 Under the second chief of the firuij WilUelitt I*erthcs, 18X0-'0o, the 

 H. Mis. 15..— 35 



