22 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



of the physical geography, and to present graphically any special sta- 

 tistics of the United States to accompany the exhibits from the Smith- 

 sonian Institution at the International Exhibition of 1876, it was 

 deemed desirable to have constructed an outline map on a scale suffi- 

 ciently large for that purpose. The design and construction of this map 

 were intrusted to Mr. W. L. Nicholson, topographer of the Post-Office 

 Department, and from the drawings prepared under his care a number 

 of prints were made by lithograph transfer. The map is on a scale of 

 16 miles to the inch, (1 : 1,013,760,) in 20 sheets, covering, when mounted, 

 an area of 16| feet long, (horizontally,) by 15 feet wide, (vertically,) 

 extending from the southern shores of Lake Winnepeg and Hudson's 

 Bay to the parallel of 15° north latitude, taking in the whole of the 

 Gulf of Mexico, Yucatan, and the larger West India Islands. From 

 east to west it includes parts of Nova Scotia and of Vancouver Island, 

 the Territory of Alaska being shown, on a smaller scale, detached, in a 

 vacant corner of the map. The meridians and parallels were laid down 

 from the polyconic-projection tables of the United States Coast Survey 

 Office. The details are restricted to the more general topographical (and 

 political) features — the shore-lines of the oceans and great lakes, the 

 principal rivers, the State aud international boundaries, and a few of 

 the larger cities, the mountain-topography being omitted, as one of the 

 desiderata for additions to such a map of this continent. 



The original construction and the printing of this map were under- 

 taken by the Smithsonian Institution, but, as an offset toward the re- 

 imbursement of this expense, propositions were made and accepted 

 from several of the subcommissions of the United States executive 

 departments exhibiting at Philadelphia for the purchase of a limited 

 number of copies of the map. Under these arrangements, the Agricul- 

 tural Department made use of a series of six of these maps, ex- 

 hibiting by colors, in a very effective manner, statistics of the value 

 of farm-lands, wages of farm-labor, areas of woodland, products of 

 sugar-crops, of textile fibers, and of fruits. The Light-House Board 

 employed one for showing the sites of and the relative orders of all the 

 light-houses along the sea-coast, the great lakes, and the Mississippi, 

 Missouri, and Ohio Bivers. The Post-Office Department made use of 

 one to show the railway mail-service of the United States. Various 

 bureaus of the Department of the Interior, including the Census, Educa- 

 tion, and Geological Survey of the Territories, used several sets of the 

 same. 



The Smithsonian Institution exhibited four of these maps for present- 

 ing the results of the meteorological discussions of rain-fall and of 

 temperature over the United States in the summer and winter months. 

 These were enlargements from the maps accompanying the publications 

 of the Smithsonian Institution. On these four maps an attempt was made, 

 by the addition of the greater mountain chains, to give a coincident 

 view of their relation to the great climatic elements. 



