194 



NA TURE 



[August 12, 1909 



in an appendix six different schedules of science work, 

 which will doubtless be valuable and suggestive to 

 teachers. In fact, the report should be read by all 

 public-school governors and teachers, pastors and 

 masters. 



THE EGYPTIAN LAND SURVEY.' 



THIS interesting volume forms a worthy ter- 

 mination to a piece of work of considerable 

 interest and of immediate practical importance, the 

 construction of the great land map of Egypt. 



The fertile valley of the Nile has been a densely 

 populated and closely cultivated tract from the 

 earliest dawn of civilisation ; so far back as 2000 B.C. 

 methods of boundary delimitation and area computa- 

 tion are recorded as being in use, methods which, 

 with modifications and improvements only at rare 

 intervals, have lasted down to quite recent times. 

 Seeing the intimate connection of the system of land 

 tenure with the daily life of the people, we might be 

 surprised to find that, up to ten years ago, there 

 was in existence no general land map. It is, how- 

 ever, quite possible for a complex and orderly scheme 

 of land-holding to coexist with an entire absence of 

 maps — our own islands could be adduced as an ex- 

 ample of this ; in fact, it is not in general until 

 required for fiscal purposes, i.e. for some form of 

 land taxation, that a complete cadastre, or accurate 

 large-scale map, is demanded. 



In Egypt, when the present Survey Department 

 was constituted in 1898, following upon a survey of 

 State lands begun in 1892, it was found that though 

 vast sums had been expended upon spasmodic efforts 

 at map-making, no work of a permanent nature had 

 been done and for all practical purposes most of the 

 monev so spent might as profitably have been thrown 

 into the Nile. Thus, for example, during the ten 

 vears from 1878 to 1888 an elaborate cadastre of 

 part of five provinces was made, but being based 

 upon no svstem of triangulation or other accurate 

 fixation of points, and being carried through so that 

 no part of the work was really self-contained and 

 complete, the whole was well-nigh valueless. In 

 this wav about 400,000/. was spent. If we cared 

 to calculate the sums similarly wasted on previous 

 .abortive attempts we could doubtless exhibit a very 

 handsome total, driving home the lesson that in map- 

 making inaccurate and inefficient work spells, not 

 onlv trouble and delay, but a large, direct waste of 

 public money. 



In 1898, however, this waste, so far as Egvpt is 

 concerned, came to an end; a standing survey de- 

 partment was established ; the idea that the mapping 

 of a region is a temporary business, which can be 

 completed in a definite period and then set aside as 

 finished — a delusion still found lingering in certain 

 quarters — was discarded, and the whole work was 

 started upon sound and permanent lines. The result 

 of this wise procedure is that the administration now 

 possesses a map of the cultivated area, upon a uni- 

 form scale of 1/2,^00, a possession of enormous value 

 to the agricultural development of the country, with- 

 out which it would be almost impossible equitably 

 to collect the revenue due under the great water- 

 supoly schemes now in existence and likely to be 

 undertaken in the future. 



In general, we may fairly sav that the account of 

 a cadastral survey would not be of any appreciable 

 interest except to the professional surveyor. In the 

 case of Egypt, however, this limitation by no means 



1 " The Cadastral Survey of Eeypt, 1892-1907." Py Capr. H. G. T.yons. 

 Pp. viii+421. (Cairo: National Printing Dept , 190?.) Price 400 milliemes. 



holds, and many portions of the present volume, 

 especially the descriptions of the old land measures 

 and the methods of arriving at the areas of holdings, 

 will be found attractive to the general reader. To 

 the survevor this graphic summary of modern map- 

 making in the land generally accounted the birth- 

 place of his science cannot fail to prove enthralling. 

 There is possiblv no country where exactly the same 

 conditions are to be found as those obtaining in the 

 Nile vallev, but there is much in this volume applic- 

 able to the survev of any closely populated, flat 

 district. Anvone who has the planning of such 

 work, or who is in any way concerned with its 

 execution, owes a debt of gratitude to Capt. Lyons 

 and his staff for the trouble they have taken to place 

 on record the fruits of their accumulated experience. 



E. H. H. 



NOTES. 

 Dr. JK. Breixl, who has worked in connection with the 

 Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for the past five 

 years, has been appointed director of the newly founded 

 School of Tropical Medicine in Western Australia. 



Prof. Wilhelm Valentiner has resigned the director- 

 ship of the Astronomical Institute of the grand ducal 

 Observatory of Heidelberg. This institution is now 

 merged with the Astrophysica! Institute, under the general 

 direction of Prof. Max Wolf. 



Lieut. -Colonel .Allan Cunningham, R.E., announces 

 the verification of a Mersenne's number (the lowest as yet 

 unverified) to be composite, viz. 



2'' -I = 228479. 10334355636337793. 

 The nature of the large factor has not been determined. 



The death is announced in Science of Prof. S. W. 

 Johnson, emeritus professor of agricultural chemistry in 

 Yale University, where he held a professorship for fifty- 

 three years. He had been a member of the National 

 Academy of Sciences since 1866, had served as a past- 

 president of the American Chemical Society, and was 

 eminent for his contributions to agricultural chemistry. 



The Tuberculosis Exhibition which was held at the 

 .Art Gallery, Whitechapel, with great success (see Nature, 

 July 8, p. 48) — more than 70,000 people visiting it — has 

 been moved to the Imperial International Exhibition 

 (White City), Shepherd's Bush, and was opened there on 

 Friday, August 6, by Lord Balfour of Burleigh. We 

 understand that the organisers have already enough invita- 

 tions to take the exhibition to the various districts of 

 London and the provincial cities to keep it occupied for 

 quite a year. 



The Cracow Academy of Sciences has awarded the 

 Nicolas Copernic prize, amounting to 1000 crowns, to 

 M. Jean Krassowski, of Cracow, for his treatment of the 

 question, " A I'aide de la m^thode de M. A. Schuster, 

 examiner la question si les p^riodes des variations des 

 latitudes, indiqu^es par MM. Chandler, Kimura, &c. , 

 sont r^elles ou non." The Constantin Simon prize, of 

 goo crowns, for a work in the Polish language on mathe- 

 matics or physics, has been adjudicated to M. Stanislas 

 Zaremba, for his book " Expos^ des premiers Principes 

 de la Thiiorie des Nombres enticrs." 



The British Museum (Natural History) has obtained 

 from Mr. C. H. Sternberg a series of remains of the 

 large dinosaurian Trachodon, from the Laramie Cretaceous 

 formation of Wyoming, of which an account was pub- 



NO. 2076, VOL. 81] 



