JUNE 28, 1912] 
Dr. Joun SarrerRty has been appointed lec- 
turer in physics at the University of Toronto. 
Miss Carrie M. Derick, who has been act- 
ing-head of the department of botany at Mc- 
Gill University, Montreal, for two years, has 
been appointed professor of morphological 
botany. She is the first woman who has been 
made a full professor in a Canadian university. 
DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 
OBLIQUE ORIENTATION OF MAPS AND HALF-TONES 
Tr is a well-nigh universal custom of car- 
tographers, in constructing maps on the 
orthogonal, conic, or any other projection with 
converging meridians, to draw the central 
meridian straight in each case and place it 
parallel to the lateral edges of the paper, ex- 
cept when dealing with small areas consider- 
ably elongated in a direction oblique to the 
meridians, such as Manhattan Island or some 
portions of the coast. In recent years, how- 
ever, there have appeared in scientific litera- 
ture quite a number of sketch-maps of the 
eastern United States with the central meri- 
dian inclined several degrees to the perpendic- 
ular, without any apology or explanation. 
One of the latest examples is the map of the 
chestnut-bark disease on page 420 of ScimncE 
for March 15, 1912. 
Evidently the persons who have submitted 
such maps for publication simply took base- 
maps of the whole United States and cut them 
parallel to the edges without taking the 
trouble to orient them in accordance with the 
cartographic principle above mentioned, and 
the result is rather offensive to the eye of the 
geographer. In the case mentioned less than 
half the original base-map was used, with the 
result that even the western edge of the pub- 
lished map is inclined a little to the left, and 
the central meridian is about 10° out of 
plumb. (There is a correctly oriented map on 
page 406 of the same issue of SCIENCE.) 
Of course if the meridians were shown on 
such maps their curvature (in some of the 
projections commonly employed) would still 
reveal the fact that part of the original had 
SCIENCE 
985 
been cut away, even if the central meridian of 
the part used were placed as nearly upright 
as possible; but on the maps in question the 
meridians are not shown, and there are no 
north-and-south lines long enough to have 
any perceptible curvature. Neither is there 
any horizontal lettering that had to be kept 
in the same position when the map was 
trimmed; and even if there was a legend in 
one corner it would be a simple matter to cut 
it out and place it in a new position. 
A somewhat similar disregard for appear- 
ances is often exhibited by persons who use 
half-tone illustrations. It goes without say- 
ing that a rectangular photograph should 
have its horizon (if any) and all its vertical 
lines parallel to its edges, unless there is 
some special reason for treating it otherwise; 
but photographs several degrees out of plumb 
are very often published in: text-books, scien- 
tific reports and magazines, even in some mag- 
azines which seem to take pride in the qual- 
ity of their illustrations. 
The principal cause of this rather annoying 
condition is probably in many cases too much 
division of responsibility. A traveler who 
makes photographs, especially if he is work- 
ing for some institution which pays his ex- 
penses and furnishes the photographic mate- 
rial, often has them developed and printed 
without his personal supervision, by some 
human “machine” who treats all the views 
alike, no matter if some of them are a little 
out of plumb, as is almost certain to be the 
case, especially with snap-shots. When the 
time comes to supply illustrations for a manu- 
script the average author perhaps looks over 
his negatives, or a list of them, and gives 
orders for prints of certain ones, without 
noticing that some might be improved by 
judicious trimming, either to make the hori- 
zon level or to cut out superfluous portions. 
Then the editor, even if he notices that some 
of the prints need trimming, may be too busy 
to attend to it, or more likely not equipped 
with suitable apparatus, so he passes them on 
to the engraver, who naturally reproduces 
each picture just as it is, in the absence of 
instructions to the contrary. 
