OCTOBEB 29, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



591 



tional work on all sides, for there is hardly 

 any branch of geography which offers so 

 remunerative a field for activity as cartog- 

 raphy. We need the cooperation of trained 

 geographers to study requirements, and to 

 make acquaintance with the limits of tech- 

 nical methods of reproduction, so that they 

 may be in a position to deal with many ques- 

 tions which arise in the preparation of a 

 map regarding the most suitable mode of 

 presentation of data, a matter which is 

 purely geographical, but which at the pres- 

 ent time is too often left to the skilled 

 draughtsman. Neither the compilation nor 

 the reduction of maps are merely mechan- 

 ical processes. The first requires great skill 

 and care as well as technical knowledge 

 and a sound method of treatment if the 

 various pieces of work, which are brought 

 together to make up the map of any con- 

 siderable area, are to be utilized according 

 to their true worth. This demands a com- 

 petent knowledge of the work which has 

 been previously done on the region, a first- 

 hand acquaintance with the data collected 

 by the earlier workers, and the critical 

 examination of them in order that due 

 weight may be given to the better material 

 in the final result. This is not a task to be 

 handed over to the draughtsman, who wiU 

 mechanically incorporate the material as 

 though it were all of equal accuracy, or will 

 adjust discrepancies arbitrarily and not on 

 any definite plan. Such preliminary prep- 

 aration of cartographical material is a 

 scientific operation which should be carried 

 out by scientific methods and should be 

 completed before the work reaches the 

 draughtsman, who will then have but to 

 introduce detail into a network of controls 

 which has been prepared for him and of 

 which the accuracy at all points has been 

 definitely ascertained. Similarly in the 

 second case the elimination of detail which 

 must of necessity be omitted is an opera- 



tion needing the greatest skill, a full under- 

 standing of the material available, and an 

 adequate appreciation of the result which is 

 being aimed at, such as is only to be found 

 in a competent geographer who has made 

 himself intimately acquainted with all the 

 material which is available and has his 

 critical faculty fully developed. 



The use of maps has steadily increased 

 of recent years, but we should look forward 

 to an even more widely extended use of them 

 in the future ; and this will be greatly facil- 

 itated if there are geographers who have 

 made themselves masters of the technique 

 of map reproduction and, as scientific 

 geographers, are prepared to select such 

 data as are needed for any particular class 

 of map on a well-considered method, and 

 not by the haphazard procedure to which 

 the want of a scientific study of carto- 

 graphic methods must inevitably lead. The 

 paucity of papers dealing with practical 

 cartography and the compilation of maps 

 is clear proof that this branch of the sub- 

 ject awaits far more serious attention than 

 it now receives. 



All these problems are well within the 

 reach of the geographer to whom the oppor- 

 tunity of travel in other regions does not 

 come, and in them he will find ready to his 

 hand a field of research which is well worth 

 working and which will amply repay any 

 labor that is spent upon it. The same pre- 

 cise methods of investigation which are em- 

 ployed in the discussion of observations 

 should be applied to all cartographic mate- 

 rial in order to ascertain the exact stand- 

 ard of its reliability, in which is included 

 not only the correctness of distance and 

 direction, but also the accuracy of the in- 

 formation which has been incorporated in 

 it; and these may be brought to bear also 

 on those early maps of which so many are 

 preserved in our libraries in this country. 

 In this field of study several investigators 



