346 REPORTS ON THE STATE OP SCIENCE. — 1920. 



The Urgent Need for the Creation within the Empire of a Central 

 Instituiion for Training and Research in the Sciences of Surveying, 

 Hydrography , and Geodesy. 



By Dr. E. H. Geiffiths and Major E. 0. Heneici. 



(Paper opening joint discussion in Sections A and E, August 27. Ordered by 

 the General Committee to be printed in cxtenxo.) 



Good maps are necessary for the development of a country, for such pur- 

 poses as defining property boundaries, limits of mining and other concessions, 

 and so on, as well as for such engineering purposes as railway, road, and canal 

 schemts, hydro-electric schemes, water supply, irrigation, &c. The importance 

 of good charts, as well as reliable information as to tides and cui'rents, hardly 

 needs emphasising. An incorrect or out-of-date chart will cause losses due 

 to delays to shipping, even if it does not lead to more direct loss. Anything 

 that will assist in the production of up-to-date and. accurate charts is of great 

 and direct benefit to the shipping industry, and through it to the nation. Even 

 when such work has once been completed there is no finality, as both maps and 

 charts require periodical revision at more or less frequent intervals, according 

 to circumstances. 



The economical and speedy production of such maps and charts necessitates 

 a thorough knowledge of the principles on which all survey work is based, 

 and of the best means of applying such principles under varying conditions. 

 Apart from revision work, there is still a veiy great deal of survey work waiting 

 to be carried out. Enormous areas still exist in the Empire which are surveyed 

 very inadequately or not at all. 



Very large sums have been misapplied in the past owing to a lack of appre- 

 ciation of the principles which should underlie all survey work. The following 

 quotation from the official account of the ' Cadastral Survey of Egypt,' by 

 Captain H. G. Lyons (Cairo, 1908), is an example of this : 



' Surveying has been carried on in Egypt to a considerable extent during 

 the last ninety years, and the work of Muallim Ghali and M. Masi, 1813-1822. 

 of Mahmud Pashael Falaki, 1861-1874, of the cadastre of 1878-1888, of the 

 Hydrographic Survey of 1889-1898, amounting to a total of some forty years' work 

 on the geographical measurement of the country, had been accomplished before the 

 cadastral survey, which has just been completed, commenced. That more perma- 

 nent results were not obtained from them is mainly due to want of scientifically 

 organised control and supervision, so that inferior work was not detected, and the 

 standard of accuracy was allowed to fall below that which was necessary in 

 so densely populated a country. The circumstances of the time have usually 

 been responsible for this, and want of funds, urgent demands for maps to be 

 prepared within a minimum length of time, and other similar causes led to 

 much repetition of work without producing reliable maps of the country. 



' During the time that the present Survey Department has been engaged in 

 measuring the cultivatable lands in Egypt, much inconvenience has been 

 experienced from the want of any complete account of these earlier surveys. 

 . . . When the formation of the Survey Department was undertaken in 1898, 

 no complete account existed of the work of this kind which had been previously 

 undertaken. References to it existed in various reports, but the detailed 

 information concerning the methods employed, their cost, the recruiting and 

 training of staff, and relative values of different ways of executing the work 

 was not available. There was no time then to undertake its compilation, but 

 had such a work existed, subsequent work would have been greatly expedited 

 and facilitated, and a considerable economy would have resulted.' 



The Egyptian Survey of 1878-1888, mentioned above, cost some £360,000, 

 and produced incomplete maps of some 2,000 square miles. Almost the whole 



