BELIEF MAPS. 
359 
Mbit his appreciation of form and his skill in rendering 
what he sees. The second method is purely mechanical. 
The sides of smoothly sloping hills appear in the finished 
model as a series of steps, and the whole result looks wooden, 
stiff, and unfinished, like the new building from which the 
surrounding scaffolding, used during construction, has not 
been removed. The lesson of the Fair on this method is 
that its decadence is far advanced. 
Purposes .—We have assumed throughout that the pur¬ 
pose of the relief map was to portray strikingly, truthfully, 
and artistically the relief forms shown. If such is not the 
purpose, then qualification is necessary. If the object is to 
advertise either a summer resort, a mineral spring, a canal 
project, or a boom town, other principles may be used for 
model-making, and in some, if not all, cases properly so. 
Visitors to the Mining Building were attracted by an enor¬ 
mous model of Nicaragua showing the proposed canal 
route. The topography of the model, with its 15-fold ex¬ 
aggeration, is a caricature, offending the eye of the topog¬ 
rapher ; and yet it doubtless served a useful purpose. It 
drew and for a brief interval impressed a few general feat¬ 
ures on the minds of the throng of sightseers, who might 
have passed a smaller, more artistic, and more truthful 
model unnoticed. 
Of the model of the canal system of New York State, 
with its 44-fold exaggeration, this cannot be said. If Nica¬ 
ragua was a caricature, this was a cartoon. 
Those models which have been prepared for the purpose 
of misleading by deliberately making flat places steep or 
steep places flat or by any other departure from the known 
facts we pass by in silence. They are outside the purpose 
of this paper. 
Installation .—One minor matter in connection with the 
exhibit deserves mention, to wit, the manner of placing or 
exhibiting the models. Most of them were placed flat, 
upon their backs, on a raised platform or table. Occasion¬ 
ally they were hung on the wall vertically and sometimes 
