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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



■small. By train or automobile we may 

 traverse the area represented on a single 

 atlas sheet in an hour or two, and one 

 cannot conveniently carry enough sheets 

 to trace the course of an extended jour- 

 ney. 



In reducing the scale to i6 miles to the 

 inch we reduce also the details which may 

 be shown, and we must necessarily elimi- 

 nate the local objects. But that scale is 

 still sufficiently large to comprise all of 

 the essential features which one would 

 wish included in a general view, and the 

 scope becomes such that a single sheet 

 serves for a day's journey. 



Maps of various parts of the United 

 States, which approach the one-millionth 

 m scale and scope, are not uncommon. 

 Land Office maps, prepared by the gen- 

 eral government, and state maps designed 

 for different purposes have not infre- 

 quently been published with lo, 12, or 15 

 miles to the inch, and for some years past 

 the Geological Survey has had maps in 

 preparation with the design of publishing 

 them on the one-millionth scale. But it 

 lias^ awaited the conclusion of an inter- 

 national agreement before pushing them 

 to publication. 



the; originator of the; pi,an 



It was in 1891 that the proposal for a 

 standard international map of the world 

 was first made by Prof. Albrecht Penck, 

 then professor of geography at the Uni- 

 versity of Vienna and now at the Univer- 

 sity of Berlin. Professor Penck, who 

 ^yas at that time a young and compara- 

 tively little known man, might have found 

 It difficult to arouse interest for his plan 

 except that he was able to bring it before 

 the International Geographical Congress 

 which met in Bern in that vear. The 

 geographers who were there' assembled 

 "knew from their own experience the great 

 inconveniences which arise from the use 

 of maps on many scales, and thev appre- 

 ciated the great advantage which would 

 accrue to the study of geography if we 

 could but have one standard map on a 

 tmiform scale. They therefore took up 

 the project, passed resolutions favoring it 

 and committed the plan to a committee 



with instructions to report at the succeed- 

 ing congress. 



The members of the committee repre- 

 sented ten different countries and were 

 twenty in number. The list of names in- 

 cludes the leading geographers of the 

 time and men high in official rank, whose 

 duties in other directions were already 

 onerous. Air Alendenhall, superintend- 

 ent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey 

 and Major Powell, director of the Geo- 

 logical Survey, represented the L^nited 

 States. It might have been foreseen that 

 so large a committee would be inef- 

 fective, because it was impossible to as- 

 semble the members for discussion 

 Kecogmzmg the need of an efficient sub- 

 committee to study the problem and for- 

 mulate proposals, the general committee 

 invited three representative scientists of 

 Switzerland, at the head of whom was 

 Eduard Bruckner, then professor of 

 geography at the University of Bern, to 

 act m an advisory capacity, and to this 

 subcommittee is due the credit of such 

 progress as was made in the development 

 of the question. A report submitted bv 

 Professor Briickner at the Sixth Inter- 

 national Geographical Congress at Lon- 

 don, m 1895,* contains a discussion of 

 all the principal items on which agree- 

 ment was necessary, and presents clearly 

 the difficulties which arise from different 

 usages in cartography. 



But if the general committee failed as 

 an executive body, it served most excel- 

 lently to make the plan widely known as 

 is shown by the list attached to Professor 

 Bruckner's report of twenty-one articles 

 published m the interval between the 

 two meetings of 1901 and 1905. 



At the Geographical Congress held in 

 Berlin in 1899, Professor Penck again 

 brought forward his plan for a world 

 map but the difficulties of adjusting na- 

 tional differences seemed insuperable 

 Prominent among these were the abso- 

 lute refusal of the English geographers 



* Briickner, E. Rapport du President de la 



Commission pour I'Etablissement d'line Carte 



de la Terra a 1 Echelle de i : 1,000,000. Report 



T } international Geographical Congress, 

 JUondon, 1895. 



