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National Geographic : 1904 Oct
Contents
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE such a way that there is only a very little amount of deformation. It is thus for the first time that dis tant parts of the earth's surface are represented so that they can be directly compared with one another. One who is familiar with Cuba needs only to lay the French map of this island at the side of the German or French map of China to see at one glance the space which has been overwhelmed in the Russian-Japanese war. A student of the coast lines can now compare the bays of Shantung with those of Cuba, and another can compare the behavior of the rivers in South Abyssinia with those in South China, and a third will be able by the chosen projection to de termine the exact areas of lands, rivers, basins, lakes, and so on. Allthis indicates considerable progress in the practical and theoretical study of different parts of the world, a progress which is not essentially affected by the fact that the maps are not as uniform as was desirable. Uniformity reigns as to scale and nearly as to the limitation of the sheets, each of them embracing a surface lying between 4 degrees of latitude and 6 degrees of longitude, but their arrangementis based upon different parallels and meridians. The English and the French maps use the equator as the initia parallel of the zones of the sheets; the German sheets, however, use the parallel of north. Still greater variety reigns as to the limiting me ridians. The English maps use as the initial meridian for the columns of the sheets that of Greenwich; the German that of 4 east latitude ; the French that of Paris. The French sheets of China do not therefore correspond to the Ger man sheets of China, and if the Indian map be executed and the French map is extended over larger areas of Asia, as planned, its sheets will overlap the In dian sheets. Thus much double work will be done and the English and French maps can not be directly joined. The same trouble will happen with the En glish and German maps. We have in the English, French, and German maps not sheets of one map, but sheets of dif ferent maps, though each of these maps realizes the advantages of a map of the world. In execution the different maps are based on the same principles that are proposed for a map of the world and now in general use. Water is represented blue, mountains by brown or gray shad ing or sketched contour lines; names and some ways of communication black, on the German and the French map partly red. But there are differences in the adopted signs for towns and in the style of lettering the names, though each separates duly the names of rivers, mountains, and townships by the char acter of the lettering. Greater differ ences exist in the measures adopted for height indications; the German and French maps use the meter, the En glish the foot. The greatest differences, however, lie in the orthography of names and in the fact that we see on the several series of sheets geographical terms in different languages. In all these respects the maps stand on a na tional and not on an international basis, and do not show that uniformity which one might wish for a map of the world. But it must be admitted that in many of these respects strong uniformity can be reached. The state of our geographical knowledge does not allow us to represent all countries with the same degree of accuracy; there can not be perfect uni formity in their representation ; there will always necessarily be a certain lib erty of representing unlike phenomena. The orthography used by the civilized nations being different, there can be no uniform orthography of geographical names, and the international orthogra phy must depend for all those countries which use the Latin alphabet on a na tional base. Uniformity can only be reached as to a scale, as to the projection 406
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