RELIEF MAPS. 
BY 
Marcus Baker. 
[Read before the Philosophical Society, February 3, 1894.] 
Scattered among various buildings of the Columbian Ex¬ 
position at Chicago were a goodly number of models or 
relief maps. Of these there were, in all, perhaps 75 or 100 
of various sizes, from small to very large; of various col¬ 
ors—green, brown, yellowish-white, and assorted; of various 
degrees of exaggeration, from natural scale to more than 
forty-fold, and designed for various purposes. 
Near the close of a brief visit to the exposition I began 
to take notes respecting these relief maps and to study them 
from the artistic or artisan’s point of view. By this is meant 
that attention was given, not to the thing represented, but 
to the mode of representing the thing. For example, the 
relief map of the state of New York was examined, not 
for the purpose of learning something of the topography or 
geography of New York state, but to discover the qualities 
of the relief map. Did it give a true picture, or a pleasing 
one ? What constituted its merits and its defects ? And if 
a new model of the state were to be made, what could be 
learned from this model that would be helpful in making a 
better one ? Up to the present time relief maps and relief- 
map makers are so few, at least in the United States, that 
competition or rivalry in their art has hardly begun. It 
would be highly instructive to bring together a collection 
of models for comparison and study, such comparison and 
study to be directed toward developing the art of relief map 
making. 
45—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 12. 
(349) 
