TRANSACTIONS OF THK SECTIONS. 201 



France. I account for it by two principal reasons. The first is, that the maps are 

 always printed on stiff paper, which makes them cumbrous and untit for immediate 

 use: it requires large portfolios or drawers to keep them smooth, clean, and in separate 

 Sets, and an unusually large talile to lay them out side by side, to examine them 

 comfortably and to select what is wanted. These conditions do not exist on the 

 crowded counter of an ordinary bookseller's shop, where it is impossible to handle 

 them without risk of injury, and without the certainty of incommoding other 

 customers. Moreover, their stiffness and size, even when published in quarter 

 sheets, make them most inconvenient to the purchaser. Either he has to send 

 them to bo mounted in a substantial and therefore costly manner, or he must carry 

 a roll home with him, and cut oft" the broad ornamental borders and divide the 

 sheet into compartments suitable for the pocket, which, to say the least, is a 

 troublesome operation to perform with neatness. The other of the two reasons why 

 the maps are rarely offered for sale is that the agents for their publication are them- 

 selves map-makers, and therefore competitors, and it is not to be expected of human 

 nature that they should push the sale of maps adversely, in however small a degree, 

 to their own interests. 



The remedy I shall propose for the consideration of the Committee of this Section 

 is, to memorialize Government to cause an issue of the maps to be made in quarter 

 sheets on thin paper, and to be sold folded into a pocket size, like the county maps 

 seen at every railway-station, each having a portion of an index-map impressed on 

 its outside, to show its contents and those of the neighbouring sheets, as well as 

 their distinguishing numbers. Also I would ask that they should be sold at every 

 " Head Post-office " in the United Kingdom. There are about seven hundred of 

 these offices, and each might keep nine adjacent quarter sheets in stock, the one in 

 which it was situated being the centre of the nine. An index-map of the whole 

 survey might be procurable at each of these post-offices, and, by prepayment, any 

 map not kept in stock might be ordered at any one of them, and received in the 

 ordinary course of the post. This is no large undertaking that I have proposed. 

 The price of a quarter sheet in its present form, which is more costly than what I 

 ask for, used to be sold for only sixpence ; therefore the single complete set of nine 

 sheets for each office has a value of not more than four shillings and sixpence, 

 and for all the seven hundred Head Post-offices of not more than £1G0. 



I believe that these simple reforms would be an immense public boon, by enabling 

 any one to buy a beautiful and accurate pocket-map of the district in which he 

 resides for only sixpence, and without any trouble. They would certainly increase 

 the sale of Government maps to a great extent ; they would cause the sympathies 

 of the people and of their representatives in Parliament to be enlisted on the side 

 of the Survey, and they would probably be imitated by continental nations. 



It has often been objected to any attempt to increase the sale of Government 

 maps, that the State ought not to interfere with private enterprise. I confess myself 

 imable to see the applicability of that saj'ing. It would be an argument against 

 making Ordnance Maps at all : but the nation has deliberately chosen to undertake 

 that work, on the ground that no private enterprise could accomplish it satisfac- 

 torily; and, having done so, I cannot understand why it should restrict the sale of 

 its own work, in order to give a fictitious protection to certain individuals, against 

 the interests of the public. It seems to me to be a backward step in political 

 economy, and one that has resulted in our getting, not the beautiful maps for which 

 we, as taxpayers, have paid, but copies or reductions of them, not cheaper than the 

 original, and of very inferior workmanship and accuracy. 



So much for the first of the two projects which I propose to bring before the con- 

 sideration of the Committee of this Section. It is convenient that I should preface 

 my second one with a few remarks on colour-printing, its bearing on the so-caUed 

 " bird's-ej'e views," and its recent application to cartography. Colour-printing is 

 an art which has made groat advances in recent years, as may be seen by the 

 specimens struck off in the presence of visitors to the present International Exhi- 

 bition. One of these receives no less than twenty-four consecutive impressions, 

 each of a diii'erent colour from a dillerent stone. This facility of multiplying 

 coloured drawings will probably lead to a closer union than heretofore between 

 geography and art. There is no reason now why " bird's-eye views " of large tracts 



