PLACE NAMES IN CANADA 519 



and that only, which was retained by the representatives of the United 

 States. How far the use of this form in so important a connection, 

 whether by accident or by design, has affected the usage of the Exec- 

 utive Departments, it is impossible to say, but that in several of them the 

 form Porto Rico is now in use is undeniable. Such use, however, is not 

 nearly so general as Mr Hill would have us believe. In the three great 

 geographic bureaus, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Hydrographic 

 Office, where the charts used in the U. S. Navy are prepared, and the 

 Geological Survey, the form Puerto Rico, said by Mr Hill to be obsolete, 

 is the only one used, except that in the last-mentioned bureau the use of 

 Porto Rico has been permitted in papers of which Mr Hill is, himself, the 

 author, and in which he has insisted upon this form being used. For 

 Mr Hill to quote Mr Hill may be amusing, but it is hardly convincing. 

 The only notable instance of the use of the form Porto Rico in the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture is, similarly, in a recent publication of which Mr Hill 

 is joint author. It is in general use, however, in the Post-Office Depart- 

 ment and the Weather Bureau, but in neither of these is its adoption 

 understood to have been the outcome of any very careful consideration, 

 and certainly in the case of the Weather Bureau it can hardly possess 

 much significance, seeing that equally conspicuous with Porto Rico in its 

 maps of the West Indies is Puerto Principe. 



The adoption or non-adoption of the Board's decisions by the De- 

 partments is, however, a matter concerning only such Departments and 

 the Board. The object of this article is not so much to justify the 

 Board's decisions as to justify The National Geographic Magazine in 

 regarding the Board as the one and only standard of authority on geo- 

 grapbic nomenclature, so far as the government and people of the United 

 States are concerned. If the need of such authority has been felt in the 

 Executive Departments to the extent of calling for presidential action, 

 how much more has it been felt by the editors of a Magazine the object 

 of which is the extension of geographic knowledge, in whose pages appear, 

 from time to time, articles dealing with those less-known regions of the 

 world whose geographic nomenclature is still in its formative stage, and 

 that desires accuracy and consistency in every statement that it contains. 

 The editor's labors have been enormously lightened by the work of the 

 Board on Geographic Names, and there is not the slightest disposition on 

 the part of the present management to aid in the restoration of that con- 

 dition of confusion and inconsistency wherein every man was a law unto 

 himself by ignoring so much as a single one of the Board's decisions. 



J. H. 



PLACE NAMES IN CANADA 



The first annual report of the Geographic Board of Canada, printed at 

 Ottawa, in 1899, by order of Parliament, has come to hand. This is the 

 first report of the Canadian Board on Geographic Names— a board 

 authorized December 18, 1897, and organized May 11 of the following 

 year. The report gives the origin and history of the board, its by-laws, 

 the rules adopted for governing its decisions, and a list of some 200 de- 



