R. A. Daly — Problems of the Pacific Islands. 159 



Duration and cost of the %oorh.—\i needs no emphasis that 

 the requisite financial and technical support for the scheme, as 

 well as the time for its accomplishment, would depend on the 

 mode of attack. " Strategic " islands, one or two to each 

 archipelago, should be examined with great thoroughness. 

 Their neighbors might be covered according to methods rang- 

 ing from those of simple reconnaissance to those of more 

 complete conquest. Thereby the plan is made not only work- 

 able but also elastic. According to the intensiveness of studies 

 outside the "strategic" islands, the project has been roughly 

 estimated to cost from $800,000 to $3,000,000. The field 

 work should extend over a period of at least ten years, in 

 order to allow for the necessary time factor in many observa- 

 tions. From five to ten years additional should be assumed 

 for systematizing and publishing the results. An annual 

 appropriation of $100,000 during the period of continuous 

 field work and an annual appropriation of $50,000 to $75,000 

 in the following years would assuredly guarantee success. 



The problems. — The sanction for a scheme so ambitions is 

 to be found ultimately in the dignity of the outstanding 

 problems and of the many others which would inevitably crop 

 out as the work progressed. For the remainder of my hour 

 I wish to indicate the quality of some of those now in sight. 



In the first place, there is urgent need of systematic 

 achievement in the field of purely descriptive geography. A 

 thoroughly satisfactory map of the Pacific, the delimitation of 

 its archipelagoes, and a complete gazetteer showing the 

 locations, areas, and heights of the islands, have yet to be made. 

 Fuller discussion of the island synonymy may w T ell supplement 

 Brigham's monumental " Index to the islands of the Pacific." 

 A map showing the submerged banks of this ocean would 

 be a welcome aid to knowledge, for it would hasten our under- 

 standing of the islands themselves. Just this ideal led to the 

 organization of the Stackhouse expedition. Now that its com- 

 mander has been lost with the " Lusitania," his plan of study- 

 ing the shallows in the Great Ocean may be long postponed ; 

 yet a compilation of data already in the hands of the world's 

 admiralties would be very useful. 



Physiographic students must long feel the lack of accurate 

 contour maps. The extraordinarily fine map of Kauai, recently 

 issued by the United States Geological Survey, is an example 

 of the kind of cartography which the governments owning or 

 " protecting " the islands may well imitate. In most cases the 

 field worker in the islands must be content with hydrographic 

 charts, more or less completely hachured, but the physiographer 

 has here the special advantage of a sea-level datum generally 

 in sight and is therefore more independent of perfect maps 



