io2 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



survey of the polar regions, Prof. Debenham gets drawn into maps as 

 naturally as every geographer is bound to be. He complains of projec- 

 tion difficulties, foresees a ' germ-density ' map, and fears that the political 

 maps may become too highly coloured. Indeed no one could expect a 

 representative of that ancient seat of learning to do anything else than 

 face the facts of life. It would be a waste of time to beat about the bush. 

 Maps are potted information about environment, and about man. They 

 are ndispensable to us and, at the moment, we are, as regards their 

 production, in the trough and not on the crest. We are living through 

 a cycle of indifference and we are forgetting the lessons of history. 

 That is the reason, as you all know, why one who has no claims to geo- 

 graphical eminence speaks to you to-day. It is because the illustrator is 

 of significance even if he pales before the author. The mapping cycle 

 is of as much, if not more, importance than any other. 



The bald statement that we are in the trough of the wave may take 

 many by surprise. For over a century we have had reason to be proud 

 of the mapping of the British Isles. For much of that period we have 

 known ourselves to be the best mapped country in the world. The 

 survey of India has had an extraordinary fine record, and for a period of 

 twenty years or so we tackled the mapping of Africa, largely to illustrate 

 its partition, with zeal. Then came the war, and, since that time, whether 

 in the short boom or in the long depression, survey departments have 

 shared in a neglect similar to that of the fighting services. In England 

 itself the reason for this neglect is curiously difficult to find. Our maps 

 and plans might serve a military purpose just as a London omnibus, or a 

 screw factory, might. Their primary purposes are to help the work and 

 the play of the nation as a whole. For example, no revision of the plans 

 shows the railway system of the Kentish coal-fields, or records the growth 

 of Scunthorpe, and so, up and down the land, innumerable interests have 

 had to map themselves and pay double for it. No revision of the maps 

 is complete in showing the full effects of the road programme. 



To get closer to geographical matters ; on what maps may we study the 

 growth of industrialism in the south, or where shall we look for a record 

 of the expansion of Birmingham ? What 6-in. plans of the Highlands 

 will explain in detail the water power schemes of to-day ? What is 

 Kinlochleven like now? 



A distinguished American — President of the International Union of 

 Geodesy and Geophysics — remarks that the principal reason for the very 

 backward state of the mapping of the United States lies in the fact that 

 that country has been rich enough to survive the handicap of inadequate 

 mapping. Are we rich enough to survive the handicap of losing the 

 value of our original survey ? and to pay through the nose for overlapping 

 work on the rates ? In 1922 we had both to live frugally and to build a 

 ' land for heroes.' On the one hand we began ambitious building pro- 

 grammes and started to recast our road communications, whilst on the 

 other we cut the survey votes to the bone. Building means supply 

 services and drainage, and we had, before us, the warnings of the cholera 

 epidemic of 1841 with its enforced and overlate expenditure on town plans. 



