Obituary. 363 



It will thus serve to correct the erroneous impression that we 

 have all received from the usual representation of this region on 

 Mercator charts (so useful in navigation) and on maps which 

 greatly exaggerate areas and distances toward the poles when 

 compared with their equatorial equivalents, and to the eye, pre- 

 sent the general continental coast lines out of their proper angu- 

 lar relation to one another. 



The problem of representing any considerable portion of the 

 ellipsoidal form of the earth on a plane surface is not readily 

 dealt with, or in other words is intractable. Always some desir- 

 able features must be sacrificed in order to incorporate those of 

 primary value to the problem or area at hand. In the present 

 instance the property of true scale along a great circle, tangent 

 to the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude at the central meridian 

 of the map, was chosen. This great circle is approximately the 

 shortest distance between San Francisco and Manila, and in close 

 proximity to it lie practicallj^ all the important points of interest, 

 such as the Panama Canal, Mexico, our Pacific Coast, Alaska, the 

 Philippine Islands, Japan, and the coast of China. This is 

 accomplished through the use of- the transverse polyconic projec- 

 tion, which is the regular polyconic, or American, projection 

 turned from its normal vertical axis to a lateral great circle axis. 

 This is an involved and laborious operation but the resulting 

 advantages are well worth while where areas of this nature are 

 presented and accuracy is desired. Both the vertical and lateral 

 axes are straight lines, true to scale and represent the shortest 

 distance (great circle) between their extreme points. 



The new Alaska base map of the IT. S. Coast and G-eodetic Sur- 

 vey is mentioned on an earlier page of this number (p. 360) . 



Obituary. 



Joseph Winthrop Spencer, the well known geologist, died the 

 9th of October in Toronto after an illness of four weeks. He was 

 born in Dundas, Ontario, and was a graduate of the Faculty of 

 Science, McGill University, then professor of geology at King's 

 College, Windsor, N. S., and later at Columbia University, Mis- 

 souri, and State Geologist of Georgia. He was widely 

 known through his investigations of the Great Lakes, and in 1907 

 was asked to do extensive research work at Niagara Falls on 

 behalf of the Geological Survey of Ottawa. His reports and 

 publications on this subject are the standard authority on the 

 Falls. 



Dr. Spencer's work covers a great field; his main interest was 

 concentrated in '^ Niagara," and he has offered a magnificent 

 contribution to the knowledge of the evolution of the Falls, their 

 relation to the Great Lakes, the origin and history of these, 



