90 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
They had discovered it to their cost in 1899, they found it out again in 
1924 ; and it seems only too likely that if an emergency arises in 1949, 
it will be discovered once more, for nothing has been done. 
This is a well-worn subject, and geographers are getting tired of asking 
whether there is yet a single topographical sheet to be bought in Australia. 
I believe that the answer is still, No: though there are some thirty sheets 
for official use produced by the Department of Defence as an earnest 
of the thousands that are wanted to cover the Continent. Canada has now 
a first-rate geodetic survey and the beginning of a good topographical 
map; but it is a big country that began survey very late, and its settle- 
ment is marching faster than its maps. Thanks to the labours of Mr. 
Wallace, we do know at last, what Lord Southesk never did, where he went 
on his journey of 1859 in the Rockies, but there is still no published map 
good enough to show the route upon. 
May I turn aside for a moment to propound a question this suggests, 
to which I have never yet found any adequate reply : What is the extent 
of the permanent harm that is done to a country by cutting it up into 
squares ; into ranges and townships, as the Canadians say ? In the flat 
prairie the effect is simple. It makes people drive about / 2times as far, on 
the average, as they need. But in broken country with a real and significant 
and compelling topography, the damage is obviously far graver; and I 
think that to assess the damage would make a very interesting thesis for 
some research degree in a Canadian university. 
And there is a pleasant problem ahead wherever the regular topo- 
graphical survey based on triangulation carried from afar invades the 
system of squares laid out astronomically. For geodetic and astronomical 
points will never fit. In local deviation. of gravity a second of arc is 
relatively nothing. But its equivalent of 100 ft. is mighty noticeable in 
the position of a boundary pillar, and it may very well be that the know- 
ledge of trouble to come is a real though unavowed ingredient in the dis- 
taste for regular survey which marks some governments. Nevertheless, 
there is much to be said for astronomical as against geodetic positions in 
a large unsettled and especially a thickly forested country. You can find 
where you ought to be on the map by an isolated fix, as a sailor does ; 
and that is not always possible otherwise. ; 
And this brings us back to new methods of survey. It is a commonplace 
of books that the surveyor in the field can always find latitude or azimuth, 
but is in difficulty with his longitude. That is no longer true. The rapid 
establishment of powerful time signals has made it possible to get longi- 
tude as exactly as latitude, and this must have a profound effect on further 
survey, exalting the astronomical at the expense of the trigonometrical ; 
facilitating marvellously the rapid reconnaisance survey; putting off 
the drastic remedy of triangulation ; but heaping up trouble in the future. 
On the other hand, the method of wireless longitudes will tend to the 
solution of two great problems, one of respectable position and one a little 
parvenu. Is the equator a circle ? No one has yet certainly challenged it, 
though Clarke and others have done their best with inadequate means. Are 
the continents floating, or rather sliding about slowly ona sima-slide ? We 
are generally agreed that Wegener has not proved his case, because he had 
a naif trust in astronomical longitudes palpably weak. Yet the question has 
been deemed worthy of a serious and costly enterprise, warmly advocated 
