﻿Unmapped Areas on Eartlis Surface. 441 



of even pioneer exploration, pointed out that soniethincr 

 like a million square miles remained to be mapped. 

 Apart from the uninhabitable regions in the north, there 

 are, as Dr. Dawson pointed out, considerable areas which 

 might be turned to profitable agricultural and mining 

 account of which we know little, such areas as these 

 which have been recently mapped out on the south 

 of Hudson bay by Dr. Bell and beyond the Ottawa by 

 Mr. O'Sullivan. Although the eastern and western 

 provinces have been very fully surveyed, there is a 

 considerable area between the two lying between Lake 

 Superior and Hudson bay which seems to have been so 

 far almost untouched. A very great deal has been done 

 for the survey of the rivers and lakes of Canada. I need 

 hardly say that in Canada, as elsewhere in America, there 

 is ample scope for the study of many problems in physical 

 geograpliy — past and present giaciation and the work 

 of glaciers, the origin and regime of lake basins, the 

 erosion of river beds, the oscillation of coast lines. 

 Happily, both in Canada and the United States there are 

 many men competent and eager to work out problems of 

 this class, and in the reports of the various surveys, in the 

 transactions of American learned societies, in scientific 

 periodicals, and in separate publications, a wealth of data 

 has already been accumulated of immense value to the 

 geographer. 



UNITED STATES. 



Every geologist and geographer knows the important 

 work which has been accomplished by the various surveys 

 of the United States, as well as by the various State 

 surveys. The United States Coast Survey has been at 

 work for more than^ half a century, mapping not only the 

 coast but all the navigable rivers. The Lake Survey has 

 been doing a similar service for the shores of the Great 

 Lakes of North America. But it is the work of the 

 Geological Survey which is best known to geographers — a 



