American Geographical Society

An American School AtlasGoode's School Atlas, Physical, Political, and Economic, for American Schools and Colleges byJ. P. GoodeReview by: Mark JeffersonGeographical Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Jan., 1925), pp. 168-169Published by: American Geographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/207937 .

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i68 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

Peary, Scott, and Amundsen. Nothing could be more unlike the problems en- countered by travelers in the Arctic and Antarctic than those which confronted Rawling and Staniforth Smith in the rain-drenched jungles of New Guinea. A chapter devoted to Wavell's pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in 1908-1909, even though not an account of pioneer exploration in the strictest sense, deserves its place in Mr. Buchan's volume because it is the story of one of the most audacious and thrilling journeys of modern times.

AN AMERICAN SCHOOL ATLAS

J. P. GOODE. Goode's School Atlas, Physical, Politcal, and Economic, for American Schools and Colleges. xii and 96 (maps) and 41 (index) pp. Rand McNally & Co., Chicago, New York, 1923. $4.00. I I X 934 inches.

Three of the maps in this atlas seem to me very fine-a most welcome advance on any maps of the United States that I know. They are the three sheets at pages 44 to 47, covering part of the northeastern and the Pacific States of the United States on the scale I: 4,000,000.

These three .maps are pleasing in general appearance, and the colors are clear, transparent, and harmonious, expressing the relief of the country most admirably. The selection of cities is good, showing intelligence and restraint. There is no crowd- ing with unimportant detail. Very effective is the picking out of the larger cities with red, in the best European style, though it might well have been extended to all cities of over a hundred thousand inhabitants, a figure which usage is beginning to accept as constituting a great city. Even in the northeast sheet that would have added only sixteen cities to those already marked out. The railways are successfully shown in thin red lines, which conceal nothing on the map and represent the main communications adequately. Except for faulty color registration-which can and should be remedied by throwing out badly printed sheets-the map is so good that the publishers ought to complete it and offer it to our schools as a wall study map. It would deserve use in every schoolhouse in the country.

There are some 25 other maps among the 300 odd in the book that have a good deal of the merit of these three sheets: Alaska (pp. 22-23), Canada (pp. 26-27), United States (pp. 30-31), Middle America (pp. 50-51), Great Britain, Ireland, and North Sea Lands (pp. 66-67), France (pp. 707i), Middle Europe (pp. 74-75), Southern Japan (p. 8i), China and Japan (pp. 82-83), Levant, Arabia, Persia, and India (pp. 84-85), Indo-China and East Indies (pp. 86-87), and Australia (pp. 90o9i) are the best. This group of 28 maps is a welcome addition to the material available in American schools, and it covers the 40 pages that give value to the present book. I am glad to see included Shantz and Zon's admirable vegetation map of the United States and Marbut's soil map, though the colors are very trying and the registration bad.

The small maps that make up the bulk of the book are not so good. Undoubtedly many of them will be found useful, and some of them have never before appeared in such a collection. The colors are unattractive, there being too many large patches of an ugly red. The maps are roughly drawn. Much neater are the similar maps obtainable in lower-priced English publications. Only moderate accuracy, I sup- pose, is to be expected on maps drawn without co-ordinates; but that cannot justify showing on-shore winds on the coast of northern Chile (p. 52). The charts of the Pacific Ocean of the Hamburg Marine Observatory leave no doubt on that point, which happens to be so important as to govern the whole economic life of the region. I should not think of consulting any of these diagrams for the climatic or economic data they tell about rather than record. In this part of the book the publishers have not risen to their opportunity. I should have liked to see Kincer's superb rainfall map of the United States get more adequate reproduction than the indifferent

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GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEWS I69

little map on page 33. Human data belong on the map, and it deserves a larger scale. But it typifies the book's treatment of climatic and economic data. Even for its scale it is not a good reproduction of the original. Rainfall maps are rather unsympathetically treated in all parts of the book.

The abridged edition costs half as much as the larger work; but, as it contains none of the maps here spoken of as best and only three of the twenty-eight called fine, the larger book is much the better bargain. There will not be much rivalry with this book. I know of no other American school atlas. The best part of the book is very creditable to American map making. MARK JEFFERSON

ANCIENT CARTOGRAPHY

KONSTANTIN CEBRIAN. Geschichte der Kartographie: Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung des Kartenbildes und Kartenwesens. I. Altertum. I. Von den ersten Versuchen der Linderabbildung bis auf Marinos und Ptolemaios (zur Alex- andrinischen Schule). Mit einem Anhang " Ptolemaios als Kartograph," by Joseph Fischer. I29 pp.; maps, diagrs. (Geogr. Bausteine, No. io.) Justus Perthes, Gotha, I923. 8Y2 x 5Y2 inches.

As explained in the preface to this small volume, dated "Spring, I914," the author's intention was to prepare a general historv of cartography not only in its mathematical aspects but in its broader relations to the history of civilization. Cebrian was killed in the World War, and publication of the present part of the work-evidently the only part that was completed-was delayed.

Based upon researches carried out more than a decade ago, the volume is in- sufficient in many points of detail. Most of its larger conclusions, however, are probably sound. The writer lays especial stress upon the gradual evolution of cartography. The art of map making did not originate in the extensive movements of primitive peoples on the earth's surface. The Egyptian conqueror, the Phoeni- cian trader, the Mongol horde, it would seem, were well able to find their way with- out the use of maps. Early cartography was, rather, an intensive growth among peoples of sedentary civilization. At first, as with the Egyptians, Hebrews, and Mesopotamian peoples, it was wholly practical: the maps of these folk were in the nature of cadastral plans, real-estate plots, specifications for the construction of temples, palaces, canals, and other engineering enterprises. They were not true topographical maps but diagrams designed to represent the sort of thing we now show on the architect's or engineer's blueprint. Greek genius, on the other hand, characteristically dealt not only with the practical but with the speculative; and among the Greeks pure, as distinguished from applied, science first made its ap- pearance. As an outgrowth of these interests came the first attempts at the making of maps of large areas and the first experiments in the representation of the entire earth's surface upon a plane.

Cebrian based his outline of Greek cartography very largely upon Hugo Berger's "Geschichte der Wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen," 2nd edit., Leipzig, I903, a work which is now twenty years out of date. Cebrian's treatment of Era- tosthenes and Ptolemy is therefore wholly inadequate in the light of more recent investigations.

THE BEARING OF NEW DATA UPON THE SHAPE OF THE EARTH

WALTER D. LAMBERT. Effect of Variations in the Assumed Figure of the Earth on the Mapping of a Large Area. U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey Serial No. 258. iii and 35 pp. Washington, I924.

It is not feasible for practical purposes to await the accumulation of complete data in order to obtain the theoretically best mean figure of the earth. The prac-

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