98 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
think was printed in England, and I believe at the War Office. There 
are infinite possibilities in the combination of layer colouring with contours, 
hachure, vertical and oblique hill shading ; many of them have already been 
realised by the Ordnance Survey, particularly in their special maps of 
holiday districts, and in a map of South Devon which I regretfully 
remember in proof only, because it was found too expensive forissue. For 
we must note that a modern map passes through the press eight or ten 
or twelve times, and the cost of the machine work, apart from all the 
plates, is multiplied in the same ratio. The wonder is not that maps 
are expensive, but that in the circumstances they are so cheap. I showed 
one day a particularly good example to Sir Coote Hedley, who said ‘ Yes, 
it has fifteen printings; I never think myself that more than eleven are 
justified!’ Yet most of us who like to think that we are still in the prime 
of life can remember when the Ordnance Survey maps were in black only. 
But it was black: the beautiful intense black from the engraved steel- 
faced plate that is never approached by any product of surface printing, 
to which we are for the present restricted. We should wish to believe, 
however, that the progress of invention may some day give us back that 
richness of tone that distinguishes the old engraved maps. 
And while I speak of invention, may I suggest to the ingenious the 
need of a machine for writing names on maps a good deal better than the 
dreadful typed names that economy too often demands? Typed names 
never have been a success. We have a horrid example of them as early 
as 1511, in the Venice edition of Ptolemy ; and equally horrid examples 
may be seen to-day on the latest large-scale sheets of the Ordnance Survey. 
Something could no doubt be done by cutting special founts of type 
suited to photographic reduction, and it is curious that no one has ever 
thought it worth while to do so. But something much more is required. 
We want a machine that will reproduce any letter of a dozen founts, 
letter by letter exactly in the right place, with that degree of flexibility 
that allows the skilled draughtsman to avoid the detail without noticeably 
spacing out the letters; to follow the curves of a river or a mountain 
chain, get the spot heights exactly placed about the spot, and the town 
signs adjusted to the names within a hundredth of an inch. Until that 
can be done map reproduction will remain several centuries behind printing 
inspeed, and the best map-work will remain terribly expensive. Mr. Reeves 
and I have often talked over the problem without getting any way towards 
a solution. I commend it to more ingenious and mechanical minds. 
If a solution is ever found, the skilled draughtsman need not fear that 
his job will be gone. On the contrary, relieved from the painful monotony 
of spending a day in drawing twenty or thirty names, he will have oppor- 
tunity to devote himself to the larger questions of artistic map draughts- 
manship. I remarked at the outset that this art has suffered a lamentable 
decline. May I devote my last few minutes to a brief examination of the 
matter, which is worth more attention than it has ever received, at any 
rate for two centuries ? 
A few months ago Dr. Lewis Evans presented to the University of 
Oxford his famous collection of early scientific instruments—astrolabes, 
dials, nocturnals, and other beautiful things—now most fittingly housed 
at the Old Ashmolean Building in the enthusiastic curatorship of Mr. 
Gunther, of Magdalen. At the opening ceremony the Earl of Crawford and 
—~— rw a ee 
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