PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY. 93 



new package of these maps brings some new illustration, which 

 is put in use as soon as opportunity allows. One of the latest is 

 a peculiar case in Southern California : a number of small rivers 

 are here seen running down from the Coast range to the shore of 

 the Pacific ; but their mouths are all shut up by sand-bars in the 

 most summary manner ! A curious trick for a Pacific ocean to 

 play on some trifling little streams that one would think were 

 beneath its notice. 



These maps are simply indispensable. They call forth much 

 interest from the class. At first hardly translatable into words, 

 their meaning grows plainer and plainer, until at the close of 

 the course they are as suggestive as they were uncommunicative 

 at the beginning. 



Foreign topographical maps. — Not less valuable and far more 

 accurate than our own topographical sheets are those of various 

 foreign topographical surveys. Unfortunately the relief in most 

 of these is expressed by hachures ; altitudes being given only for 

 occasional points, or by widely separated contour lines ; but the 

 general expression of the surface is certainly admirably rendered 

 in many of the surveys. The older maps are generally too 

 heavily burdened with hachures ; but the more modern surveys 

 are very artistically executed. It has been my practice for 

 several years past to select certain groups of sheets from the sets 

 of foreign topographical maps in our college library, and order 

 extra copies of these groups, mount them on cloth and rollers, 

 and thus prepare them for the most convenient use in the labora- 

 tory. Both the library and laboratory collections of this kind 

 are increasing year by year, and I shall soon prepare a special 

 account of the grouped sheets, in the hope that others may per- 

 ceive their great value and introduce them as teaching materials 

 as far as possible. Without specifying all that have been thus 

 far secured, I may briefly mention some of the more interesting 

 examples. 



From the Army Staff map of France (i : 80,000) there is a 

 group of sheets showing the level plain of the Landes, with its 

 exceptionally straight shore line and its wide belt of litoral sand 



