TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. G73 



the astronomical geographer, level deflection, does not interfere with his results. 

 But the same minute accuracy in graduation which has so improved the ordinary- 

 little instruments which you iind in the hands of the professional geographer has, 

 when combined with new methods for accurate linear measurement, also placed 

 it in his power to carry out a fairly coherent and systematic triangulation with 

 great rapidity and accuracy over large areas of country whenever the confio-ura- 

 tion and characteristics of that country are favourable. Usually they are favour- 

 able. Large expanses of flat desert, of imdulating veldt or of unbroken forest 

 are the exception, not the rule, and they must of course be dealt with as their 

 special peculiarities demand ; and for the normal conditions of land confio-unition 

 given that the explorer is specially careful about his base measurements and his 

 initial data, he can certainly with modern instruments and the facilities for check 

 given him by the teleo:raph, carry on a rapid and comprehensive geographical 

 survey which will fulfil all the conditions required by the administrator econo- 

 mist, political geographer, or military commander within such limits of accuracy 

 as will ensure its standing all the subsequent tests that geodesy may apply without 

 any apparent map dislocation. And practically that is all that is wanted for a 

 first map. I have used the word ' rapidly.' Few people (even scientific 

 geographers) have really grasped the full meaning of the term as applied to 

 surveys on geographical scales {i.e., 1 : 250000, or about four miles to the inch, or less) 

 under normal conditions. Such surveys can be completed quite as fast as an army 

 can advance in the field, even granting that the advance is continuous. They can 

 even to a certain extent precede that advance in face of an enemy. A single 

 triangulator with a statt' of two or three topographers in a fairly favourable 

 country will be responsible for an outturn which may be counted by hundreds of 

 square miles per day. The records of both American and Canadian surveys will 

 prove that the marvellous progress made in the frontier reconnaissance surveys of 

 India is nothing abnormal or unexpected. 



Necessity for Training Schools. 



So far I have spoken about the system only, a system which has been nearly 

 perfected by experiments in Canada, Russia, India, and elsewhere. Now we have 

 to turn from the work to the workmen. It is only lately, quite lately, that 

 England has discovered that such workmen are wanted at all. Five or six years 

 ago there was not a topographer nor a topographical school in England. But the 

 demand during late years has been insistent and constant, with the result, I am 

 glad to say, that efforts have been made in various directions to start topographical 

 schools, and a distinct change is apparent in our methods of instruction at 

 military headquarters. No purely technical central civil schools such as exist on 

 the Continent are to be found in England, and the natural result is that at present 

 England possesses no finished topographers and not many men who know what is 

 meant by a geographical survey. In the wilds of Patagouia (which is, I must 

 premise, a country beset with special climatic difficulties, but not otherwise one 

 unsuitable to the topographers art) I met many men of great intelligence and 

 exceptional skill who had been gathered from various quarters for the purpose of 

 topography. There were Italians, Argentines, Germans, French, and Swiss, but not 

 an Englishman amongst them. Russiansof the type of my old and unforgotten friend 

 Benderski have long laeen famous for their skill; but although English administra- 

 tors and soldiers are alike crying out for more and better assistance in the active 

 field of topography they cannot get it from England. The establishment of a 

 school of practical geography such as must eventually guarantee the existence of 

 a military topographical corps would be a matter of congratulation deserving to 

 be noted as an important step in the advance of the geographical education of "the 

 country, no less than the school at Oxford which deals more directly with civil 

 interests, and is rightly most concerned with the academic aspects of geographical 

 instruction. Even this, however, is hardly sufficient. I am convinced "that the 

 recommendation which arose from certain resolutions found in the Geographical 

 Section of the British Association Meeting at Bradford two years ago in favour of 



1902; X X 



