PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 759 



for hope that this state of affairs will be i-emedied in the near future. The Malay 

 States, where, owing to the fertility of the soilaudtheubiquity of rich tin ore, the 

 land values are high, have the basis of an excellent survey system, and possess a 

 backbone of triangulatiou which will eventually extend southward to Singapore, and 

 possibly northward to join the Indian series in the south of Burma. Hongkono-, 

 including the leased territory on the mainland, is of small area and of no appre- 

 ciable geographical importance. It has been adequately ma]iped for military 

 purposes. Of our insular possessions, Mauritius, St. Helena, and (in the Mediter- 

 ranean) Cyprus and Malta are thoroughly surveyed. The other islands scattered 

 throughout the ocean which fly the Union Jack, including the "West Indies, while 

 their coast lines have naturally been the subject of close attention by the 

 Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty, are, as regards their internal 

 geographical features, still quite imperfectly known. The large and important 

 territory of British Guiana is entirely unsurveyed, and indeed in part almost 

 unexplored. 



You will thus realise that if we are prepared to admit the validity of the 

 premiss that the mapping of its own territory is an imperative duty of a State 

 which aspires to justify itself before the nations as the possessor of a world-wide 

 Empire, there is still plenty of employment for the scientiSc geographer in the 

 British dominions. 



Having thus far spoken of our duties and obligations, for such they appear 

 to me, which lie abroad in countries remote from our own shores, let us now 

 turn our eyes inward and see if we cannot discern some similar duties lying 

 close to our hands. 



I take it that the great majority of us have been brought up in the idea that 

 our own Ordnance Survey is of such a high order of accuracy that a proposal to 

 undertake a revision of the fundamental triangulatiou of the British Isles must 

 appear strange. Yet this idea will not be a new one to the British Associalion, 

 for two years ago at the York meeting I brought the subject before this Section 

 in a short note, which gave rise to a useful discussion. 



What I shall say now will be in a large measure a repetition of my previous 

 remarks, a repetition for which I need offer no apology, as it will be apparent to 

 you that had any steps been taken to remove this standing reproach to British 

 geodetical science no recurrence to the subject would be called for. As matters 

 stand, however, I feel impelled to recur to it with increased emphasis, a position 

 in which I am confident of being supported by all those who earnestly care for 

 the scientific repute of our country. Some few years ago, at the request of the 

 International Geodetic Conference, a volume was prepared by General Ferrern, 

 the eminent Italian geodesist, giving a summarised account of all the geodetic 

 surveys of the world. If we take this volume and examine the relative degree of 

 precision of the difl'erent national surveys there enumerated we shall find that 

 Great Britain stands lowest on the list. 



The popular illusion, for it is really no other, as to the extreme accuracy of the 

 tnangulation of the British Isles rests in no small degree upon what must be con- 

 sidered a fortuitous circumstance — namely, the accidental smallness of the closing 

 error. Have we not all been told how at the conclusion of the triangulation, 

 when the observations had been carried from the primary base on the shore of 

 Loch Foyle across part of Ireland and across Wales and England, terminating in 

 two points on Salisbury Plain, the distance between these points was calculated, 

 using as data the measured length of the Loch Foyle base and the observed angles of 

 the triangles across the country ? The distance between the same two points was 

 then measured with every refinement of accuracy, and the measured length com- 

 pared with the calculated length. The difference between them was found to be 

 twenty inches. If in traversing a large portion of the kingdom the aggregate 

 error only amounted to this minute quantity — minute, that is, compared with the 

 distances involved, how can we either expect or demand a better result, even if 

 the work be redone with the most refined methods that the accumulated experi- 

 ence of the last fifty years can suggest P 



To answer this question we inust bear in mind that the closing error of a 



