TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 421 



increase in rapidity, because, as men become better instructed, there will be more 

 geographers. 



The construction of large scale maps on rigorously accurate principles has as 

 yet made inconsiderable progress. It is only in the countries of Europe, in India, 

 and some of our colonies, and in the United States that it has been commenced. 

 But it is very far from being completed anywhere, and the people of Sheffield have 

 had this fact brought home to them within the last year ; for the Memoir on the 

 Yorkshire Coal Field, published by the Geological Survey in 1878, was obliged to 

 stop short with the limits of the county, an artificial and inconvenient line which 

 leaves the southern portion of the field undescribed, entirely because the six-inch 

 survey had not yet been extended over Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. This 

 circumstance strikes us in two ways. It reminds us that geographical work is far 

 from being completed even in the most populous and civilised parts of our own 

 country ; and it also brings the fact home to us that the progress of other sciences 

 is dependent upon the advance of geography. 



Where the trigonometrical surveys have not been commenced, we have only 

 those maps which are based on positions fixed by astronomical observations, on 

 cross-bearings and chained distances, and which I call (to distinguish them from 

 the results of trigonometrical surveys) the topographical maps. One of the oldest 

 and most interesting of these maps is the famous atlas of the Chinese Empire 

 constructed^ the Jesuits between 1708 and 1718. But we are also dependent on 

 such maps for our geographical knowledge of all Asia except India and Palestine, 

 of the Eastern Archipelago, of all Africa and South America, and of the greater 

 part of North America. 



_ Accurate maps are the basis of all inquiry conducted on scientific principles. 

 Without them a geological survey is impossible; nor can botany, zoology, or 

 ethnology be viewed in their broader aspects, unless considerations of locality, 

 altitude, and latitude are kept in view. Not only as the basis of scientific inquiry, 

 but also for the comprehension of history, for operations of war, for administrative 

 purposes, and for the illustration of statistics, the uses of accurate maps are almost 

 infinite. M. Quetelet, in one of his well-known letters, declared that such graphic 

 illustration often afforded immediate conviction of a point which the most subtle 

 mind would find it difficult to perceive without such aid. Maps both generalise 

 and allow of abstraction. They enable inquirers at once to detect and often to 

 rectify errors, which, if undetected, would affect results and throw calculations into 

 confusion. As an example of the use of maps for administrative purposes, the 

 series constructed by Mr. Edward A. Prinsep in India is worthy of notice. They 

 showed the agricultural tribes of a special district arranged according to occupancy 

 of land, political and fiscal divisions, physical features and zones of fertility, produc- 

 tive power as influenced by rain or aided by irrigation, different kinds of soils, acres 

 under different kinds of produce, and lines of traffic. Another most instructive 

 series displays the State irrigation canals acting on improvable waste lands, the 

 depth of wells, the rainfall and zones of drought, and the parts of the country 

 already irrigated. As another noteworthy instance of the use of maps for statistical 

 illustration, I may mention the interesting ' Carte agricole de la France,' by M. 

 Delesse, which not only shows the extent of arable, meadow, and vine lands, and 

 of woods, but the relative value of land by shades and contour lines of equal 

 revenue. The idea has been adopted by Mr. Ralph Richardson in his map of Mid- 

 Lothian showing the annual rentals by colours ; and of course the colours also 

 indicate the positions of barren mountains, of fertile valleys, and of centres of 

 population. Such maps ought to be far more extensively used than is now the 

 case, for in no other way can economic and industrial facts be so lucidly and 

 clearly, as well as so rapidly, impressed on an inquirer's mind. 



The third division in which geographical delineation is classed is that comprised 

 in the labour of pioneer-exploring and discovery. This branch of our subject ex- 

 cites the most interest, because the heroic devotion and gallantry of our travellers 

 is a source of just pride to the nation; and because their perils and hardships, 

 their adventures and discoveries surround them with a halo of romance. Yet 

 these romantic associations are not confined to the pioneers of geography. Though 



