! 
E.—GEOGRAPHY. 99 
Balcarres deplored our loss of artistry in craftsmanship and demanded that 
we make some effort to retrieve the position. Let us take up his challenge. 
Can we hope to see an artistic theodolite ? The decay in beauty in con- 
struction set in very long ago, with the application of optical power. 
Hevelius, who stood out against telescopic aid in measurement, was per- 
haps the last man to have a beautiful sector. Flamsteed, who had to pro- 
vide his own instruments for the Royal Observatory, and cannot therefore 
be excused on the ground that he had to take what was given him, built 
instruments frankly utilitarian and ugly. It was a sudden and deplorable 
lapse, that cannot be accounted for by any general decay in taste, for the 
building and furnishing of the period were unsurpassed. Yet all through 
the eighteenth century scientific instruments lacked even the first grace 
of good proportions. Their makers had a touching but ill-founded faith 
in the strength and rigidity of materials, and we had to wait until well 
on in the nineteenth century before instruments fulfilled the prime duty 
of behaving like steady bodies rather than tuning-forks. I think that the 
most we can hope for is that the modern scientific instrument shall not be 
unnecessarily ugly ; and we may reasonably congratulate ourselves that 
British instruments, like British battleships, locomotives, bicycles, cars, 
and other machinery, have achieved a certain distinction of style above 
their neighbours, which is of good augury for the future. 
But there is much to be said for a real effort at improvement in the 
style of our maps, by study rather than by imitation of the past. There is 
already a small school of map draughtsmen conscious of the need, but, 
if I may say so, too self-conscious for success, relying on the deliberately 
medizval or archaic, with disastrous results. They have produced. for 
town-planners and guide-book writers some pretty drawings, with pleasing 
invention of symbols, but with explanatory legends of dismal pleasantry 
or doggerel verse. We shall not return to a better style of map-drawing 
by writing ‘ Here shall ye play ye ancient game of Golfe ’ on a label, or 
by adorning the northern margin with the words ‘ This is ye toppe.’ 
But, eschewing sham archaism, we might with great profit follow the best 
practice of our predecessors in the following matters :— 
They gave the map a border or frame, and left nothing drifting about 
outside it. 
They kept the title distinct from particulars of authorship, or origin, 
or scale. 
They did not mix their styles of lettering, and they never made the 
hair-lines too fine. 
The first two are simple, but I think none the less important ; the third 
raises a large question. The conventional signs sheet of the International 
‘Map is a useful pattern now widely followed. We could adopt the first 
principle without doing any violence to the convention, and design a frame 
to include all the explanatory matter, with a little rearrangement. But 
the rule of this map is that names of physical features—it would be more 
accurate to say of land forms—are written in block letters, so-called 
Egyptian, while other names are in various styles of Roman and Italic. 
This mixture of styles I believe was a bad mistake—bad for the appear- 
_ ance of the map, though doubtless serving a useful purpose. Whether it is 
_ possible to provide enough variety within the bounds of Roman—prefer- 
ably the Italian Roman—and Italic remains to be seen. But I feel confident 
H2 
