General Cartography: Review

General Cartography by Erwin Raisz

Review by: A. R. H.
The Geographical Journal, Vol. 96, No. 5 (Nov., 1940), pp. 351-355
Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
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 GENERAL CARTOGRAPHY

GENERAL CARTOGRAPHY. By Erwin Raisz. London: McGraw-Hill

Publishing Co., 1938. 9x6 inches; x+370 pages; illustrations and maps. 24s
is the most ambitious and comprehensive book on cartography in the
THISEnglish language, of particular value to the English student because it con?
tains so much that will be new to him, so many judgments and opinions that will
cause him to think, so abundant a terminology, and so much practical advice in
the choice of materials and use of instruments. It is not only a treatise on the
history, science, and art of cartography, but a manual of the craft: and corre-
spondingly difficult to review.
The History of Maps begins rather surprisingly with the Marshall Islanders,
the Eskimo, and the Aztecs, to show that the making of maps antedates the art
of writing. We then hark back to the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese, and
the first of a series of pictorial Time Charts of Historical Cartography sets out
very neatly the map history of 600 b.c. to a.d. 300. The Time Chart for the
Middle Ages runs from a.d. 400 to 1400, to include the Portolan Charts and the
Catalan Atlas. The Renaissance of Maps is ascribed to the rediscovery of
Ptolemy, the invention of printing, and the age of geographical discovery. Since
the first involved a setback from the relative accuracy of the portolan chart to
the exaggerated Mediterranean of Ptolemy, one may think the Portolans rather
badly served in this classification: if their excellence is attributed to the inven?
tion of the compass they may perhaps be considered the first of a new family,
standing apart from the classical and medieval tradition, and with a different
scientific basis.
The Time Chart of the Renaissance, 1470-1700, requires a double page, into
which is packed a sketch of the history of this great age, worked up into a
finished picture in the text: an excellent picture full of detail, some of it un-
familiar to us. The Reformation of Cartography round about 1700 is marked
by the change from the Dutch map with monsters and swash lettering, made
attractive to sell for profit, to the French maps, subsidized by the King and the
Academy, made by more scientific men for reputation rather than profits, the
regions unknown left blank, but the Mediterranean reduced to its proper
length. This generalization is perhaps a little unfair to the Dutch. The fourth
Time Chart, Modern Maps, runs from 1700 to 1930, but takes in the longitude
measurements of the French Academy in 1682, gives us Hadley's octant and
Harrison's chronometer in 1730, and ends with stereogrammetry in 1930. It is
the age of National Surveys, of which leading dates are given; and of Geo?
graphical Societies: there is graceful reference to our foundation in 1830 and to
our maps of exploration in the Journal. The text of Chapter III gives an interest?
ing account of how some national surveys were established, though we are
accustomed to think that our own began with Roy's work in Scotland in 1745,
and that the rebellion of the Young Pretender and not Cassini's project for con-
necting Paris and Greenwich by triangulation was the "stimulus" which led to
the Ordnance Survey in 1791. One is surprised also to find the International
Map on i/M classed as Private Cartography: it is not true of the Old World.
Chapter IV on American Cartography covers ground very little known to us,
illustrated in great detail by Time Chart No. 5. The gradual emancipation from
European influence was directed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Private cartography began with a map made and engraved by the inventor of the
steamboat. The three Legendary Rivers of the West were shown first by Juan
Pedro Walker in 1810. The invention of wax-engraving encouraged over-

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352 GENERAL CARTOGRAPHY

lettering (or perhaps only showed up the ugliness of the printer's type in which
names were stamped so easily). The county atlases were sold by subscription
with a picture of the subscriber or his farm in the accompanying text. Making
auto road maps, to be given away in millions by filling stations, "has assumed
the scope of a national industry." Such picturesque details characterize the
author's lively style.
These four chapters make Part i, the History of Maps, an admirable intro?
duction to this difficult subject. Part 2 then approaches the mathematical side,
Scales and Projections. The author favours in principle the use of decimals of a
degree instead of minutes and seconds, though he has little hope that this change
for the better will soon be accomplished. But there is nothing to prevent the
private use of these decimals in calculating map projections by anyone who had
the foresight to acquire Peters' 7-figure table of natural trigonometrical func?
tions to thousandths of a degree, published in 1938 by Teubner of Leipzig, but
now unobtainable.
There are some interesting ideas in the three chapters on Projections. The
Mercator world map enjoys an unmerited popularity, of which the chief cause
is perhaps its distortion: it is difficult to represent the small countries of
Europe on a world map, so the cartographer welcomes any projection which
exaggerates the higher latitudes. The oblique orthographic projection is widely
used in art and advertising, and for school maps, for its visual qualities: we
imagine that we see a globe instead of a map. It can be centred on any continent,
"which will then appear large in the centre of the map . . . only the peripheral
circle is true to scale"; but this rather suggests that the radial scale is too great
in the centre, whereas it is correct. Van der Grinten's projection, "for some
time widely used in America," is little known in this country, though it appears
in the introduction to Bartholomew's Oxford Advanced Atlas, but not in
the plates. We may recall it upon the postage stamp celebrating the Byrd
expedition, for which it had the advantage that the polar regions are greatly
exaggerated. Otherwise it seems a bad idea to compress the whole sphere into a
circle, which inevitably suggests a hemisphere. Another projection, even less
known to us in England though said to be "becoming quite popular in Europe,"
is Eckert's fourth, something like Apianus', with the parallels adjusted to make
it equal area. These are features which give an air of freshness to Mr. Raisz's
treatment of projections.
But he set himself a hard task in writing for the "average student of geo?
graphy" without much mathematical insight, and we think he is unwise in that
case to say that most projections are "modifications of the geometrical pro?
jections," that is, of the perspective projections of geometry. It leads him to
treat the perspective projection on the tangent cone as the "original form" of the
simple conic, which is at best unhelpful. There is a fatality about the conic
with two standard parallels which has induced mistakes from 1758 onwards, and
our author is not immune,for his construction does not give a conical projection :
the meridians do not meet in a point and are not at right angles to the parallels.
He is apt to use the word "grid" indiscriminately for projection, instead of
simply for a system of rectangular parallels to the coordinate axes on which the
projection is calculated and plotted; and there are other matters on which it is
difficult to agree with him. One cannot then avoid a feeling that these chapters
are not quite so sound as the rest of an excellent book.
Part 3 deals in four chapters with the representation of the Earth's pattern: by
Symbols, often more ambitious than those to which we are accustomed, such as
the three symbols to distinguish the three major types of rivers, actively down-
cutting, balanced meandering, and aggrading or braided; by Hachuring and

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 GENERALCARTOGRAPHY 353

Plastic Shading; by Contours and Profiles, with the silhouette of a human face
to show how exaggeration changes the character of a profile; and by Other
Relief Methods, including altitude tints or layer-colouring, the so-called Stereo-
graphic colour-method of Peucker well developed on Swiss and Norwegian
maps, the Kantography of Dr. Lucerne who draws lines along each break in the
ground where the contour lines change direction, and the Physiographic method
which is pictorial, imagined by W. M. Davis, developed by A. K. Lobeck, and
systematized in 1931 by Mr. Raisz, who classified the Earth's surface in forty
morphologic types. In the Geographical Review for 1931 Mr. Raisz defines the
physiographic map as a systematic application of a set of symbols, derived from
oblique views just as the ordinary marsh symbol is, but applied to the vertical
map, along with the existing conventional symbols for roads, river, cities; "the
perspective has to be drawn out and the back slopes are not easy to draw." The
last clause is omitted from the book, which uses otherwise much the same words.
What is not very clear is, how one draws a river flowing in a deep gorge among
high mountains. The course of a river running east and west is presumably
drawn in its true place: are the mountains on the near side displaced to allow the
river to appear over their summits, or is their symbol though drawn as a solid
treated as transparent? Mr. Raisz in his book says only that "the physiographic
method is designed only for small-scale maps. The distortion resulting from the
oblique view is not then disturbing, because the highest mountains are not dis?
placed more than a small fraction of an inch. On large-scale maps, where the
distortion is appreciable, it is necessary to use actual block diagrams." The
block diagram is solid and quite content to hide the actual river so long as it
clearly shows whereabouts the river runs. At some smaller scale we have
changed over from the block diagram to the physiographic symbol. These
forty symbols in Table III are uncommonly like block diagrams, intended to be
viewed obliquely as solids. How can one at some change of scale switch over to
thinking of them as symbols to be laid on a map viewed vertically ? That seems
to us to be the fundamental question that is not answered in the text accompany-
ing Table XIII; and there are others not quite so difficult. What is meant by
the displacement of the highest mountains if the symbol is not to be taken as a
sketch of the actual mountain, but merely a conventional pattern meaning
Mountains? And how does one pass from No. 35 Fiords to No. 36 Glaciers,
keeping both fjords and glaciers in their true places on the plane of the map, but
using the oblique views as mere symbols ? This double function of the Physio?
graphic Symbol needs some clear thinking and a fuller exposition than has yet,
we think, been given by its systematizer.
This is not to decry the method, whose possibilities are well shown in
Professor D. W. Johnson's very skilful representation of Battlefields of the
World War (A.G.S. Research Ser. No. 3) in which "the oblique view of the
block diagram was applied to the almost vertical map." But Table III, with its
forty beautifully drawn and expressive symbols, demands a very high degree of
skill in application, and there is something to be said for writing loess and clay
desert and Karst upon the map, rather than spending too long on their admirable
but difficult symbols.
Part 4 covers Compiling, Drawing, and Reproduction. The full section on
spelling of Place Names shows how closely agreed in essentials are the U.S.
Geographic Board and the P.C.G.N. On lettering we appreciate the merits of
each other *s style without renouncing our own. Drawing tools and materials are
much the same, methods of reproduction somewhat different.
The four chapters of Part 5 deal with Maps published by Governments, with
Charts, and with Private Cartography. There is a useful list of seventeen
24

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 354 GENERALCARTOGRAPHY

principal mapping agencies in the U.S.A.; a summary of the World's most

important Topographic Maps; a chapter on Charts; and another on Private,
including semi-official, Cartography. "Only one quarter of the United States,"
we are told, "is adequately mapped. Another quarter has maps over forty years
old. The rest of the country has no topographical maps, in which respect it
lags behind most European countries." Canada is said to have adequate maps
of only one-third: but "Canada is larger than the United States with about one-
tenth of the population of the latter, and taking all into consideration, she is well
in advance of the United States in her mapping": a handsome compliment to
the Dominion. The full summary of important maps must be of great service to
Map Curators in showing them things they have missed, though there are a
few false trails: as for example the G.S.G.S. Africa 1/5M which was announced
but has not yet appeared; and a few omissions, such as the G.S.G.S. Europe
i/M lately revised.
Eight chapters are next devoted to Diagrams, Statistical Maps, Cartograms,
and Maps special to certain Sciences. Strictly speaking, says Mr. Raisz,
"diagrams are not part of cartography" but they are used on statistical maps and
in geographic illustrations, so may be included. They have however been
worked out more often by statisticians and economists than by geographers,
and geographers in general may share with the author some lack of enthusiasm
for what economists call Pie Charts: the familiar circle divided into slices to
show percentages. Simple Bar Graphs are, for popular magazines, and also in
reports of the National Resources Committee 1937, broken up into pictorial
units arranged in rows or piles, so that a Pictorial Unit Graph (Fig. 120)
occupies 8 square inches to show 1334 telephones, 837 dollars, and 9*2X2 = 19
automobiles for some purpose unrevealed. We come later to three-dimensional
graphs, such as the spheres used by Sten de Geer as population symbols, which
have the grave disadvantage "that it is extremely difficult to evaluate the volume
of solids by simple appraisal." And finally we have the Volumetric Graph,
often used in meteorology and climatology, in which "the volume of each
section will be proportionate to the product of three variables": sunlight,
latitude, and season in the block diagram (Fig. 134) "modified after William M.
Davis." We think that something has gone wrong in the attempt to multiply
sunlight by latitude by season, for with a little trouble, and drawing a few more
lines, one deduces from this figure that on June 21 the sunlight at the North
Pole is only about 25 per cent. more than at the equator. The disadvantages of
these rather childish diagrams are not disguised by Mr. Raisz: he advises that
the actual numbers they represent should be shown upon them, and leaves it to
the reader to conclude that the numbers without the diagrams are much more
economical of space, and of time.
Our suspicion that statistical geographers use the word cartogram rather
loosely is confirmed by the author, who in Chapter XXIII devoted to them
admits that the word "is subject to many interpretations and definitions" but
would himself restrict its meaning "to any highly abstracted, simplified map,
the purpose of which is to demonstrate a single idea in a diagrammatic way."
Thus if you draw rectangles proportionate to the estimates of National Wealth
compiled by the U.S. Dept. of Treasury in 1920 and arrange them more or
less in their world order you have a Rectangular Statistical Cartogram in which
the rectangle for the British Isles is nearly a third that for the United States,
and six times that for Australia and New Zealand. But if these rectangles were
not labelled with the figures for billions of dollars one could not estimate very
easily, and as the figures are given, why the rectangles ?
Centrograms are a special brand of cartogram, dignified by the creation of a

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 GENERALCARTOGRAPHY 355

whole Mendeleev Institute at Leningrad for their propagation. You first choose
between three rival definitions of centre: the centre of gravity or centroid of
the population "each individual being assumed to have equal weight and to
exert an influence on the central point proportionate to his distance from the
point"; or the median point, which has the property, rather startling until you
think it out, that "the entire population of Minnesota might move to Oregon
without affecting" it; or the point of minimum aggregate travel, of which "the
computation for the entire population is very difficult." On p. 260 we have a
centrogram showing the movements of the centres of general population and of
"higher educational population" in the United States from 1790 to 1930. In
1790 the centroid of the former was near Baltimore. By 1930 it had moved to
about 180 miles east of Saint Louis. And if in the course of centuries it moves to
the Badlands of Nebraska or to the Great Salt Lake Desert, the centre of
population will there have no more or less geographical importance than it has
now; for it appears to us that one can give it no statistical significance without
ignoring the whole of the geography. Mr. Raisz has done excellent service to
the subject by collecting such clear examples of the disservice statisticians may
do it, and by his admission on page 309 that centrograms "have importance
only if the region has the character of a geographic unit."
Chapter XXII on Distribution Maps covers ground which is more familiar
to us, though we have not developed so rich a terminology, to distinguish
between isorithms which represent a continuous value such as a contour, and
isopleths which represent lines of equal averages, such as population densities.
A comparison of isopleths and dot-maps favours the former for serious, the
latter for purely illustrative use. Then there are choropleth maps showing
quantity in area by graded tints, or turned into a relief model (Fig. 139) to show
the average assessed value of lots in Denver; but again this model has to be
marked up in figures which make the modelling superfluous. A disadvantage of
most such representations is that one cannot write names on them without
ruining the effect.
Land-slope analysis, hypsographic and clinographic curves, relative relief
maps, average slope maps, flat-land ratio maps, and the semi-pictorial repre-
sentation of ruggedness have each some curious interest. Land-utilization maps
we know more about; the United States, having no 6-inch maps for base, find
it best to mark up air-photographs in what they call a fractional code system,
which is fractional only because one code group is written above the other with
a line between. The first digit of the "denominator" defines the slope, the
second the drainage, the third the erosion, and so on up to seven: a method
for classifying rural areas ascribed to the Tennessee Valley Authority which one
might think more suitable for a register than for the face of a map.
A useful chapter XXV on geological maps and block diagrams gives a good
account of how to construct the latter from contoured maps: with the various
rules of perspective, the basic forms on which the landscape drawing is built up,
and a charming Animated Profile, which is a geological section with just a thin
strip of block diagram above it. Succeeding chapters deal with maps for many
special purposes in our own and kindred sciences, suggestively rather than
thoroughly, for the field is vast. Perhaps a little too much stress is laid on the
fashionable academic exercise of the moment; we can hardly believe that "no
geographic paper is complete without a soil map." But the book is professedly
a textbook for the geographical classroom and laboratory. As such it gives an
imposing picture of the courses which an ardent instructor thinks essential for
the department of geography in an American University, and British students
will find in it much sustenance and stimulant. A. R. H.

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