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Title: A Great Globe
Author: Elisée Reclus
Date: 1898
Language: en
Topics: geography
Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct., 1898), pp. 401-406
Notes: Paper read at the Royal Geographical Society, June 27, 1898. Before the reading of the paper, the PRESIDENT said: We have with us this evening one of the most celebrated and eminent geographers now living, M. Elisee Reclus. He has come amongst us to give us his views respecting the use of globes. I now request M. Reclus to read his paper.  After the reading of the paper, the PRESIDENT said: I have no doubt several geographers will wish to discuss this extremely important paper which M. Reclus has just read to us.

Elisée Reclus

A Great Globe

RECENTLY being in conversation here in London with a traveller and

discoverer, I mentioned the great geographical importance of accurate

representations of our planet in the shape of globes; suddenly he

interrupted me, and said with a smile, "What is the use of your

Lilliputian globes, ten, a hundred, or a thousand yards thick, when you

have the very globe itself, our good and beneficent Earth, to walk over,

to look at, to study, and to love?" Of course I laughed, and thought

with him that all representations and symbols of life are very little in

comparison with life itself: our works are small when contrasted with

nature. But the great man who thus spoke in joke knew as well as I do,

the value of scrupulous effects in geographical work. He has himself

drawn very useful maps, which enable us to follow him in his great

travels. We cannot all perambulate the surface of our planet, but we may

still be very useful in a secondary way. The great question is to know

in what direction we are to exert ourselves in order to produce the

greatest amount of perfect scientific labour. The chosen few will make

discoveries; the others, less fortunate, but happy still, will follow in

the track opened to them.

One of our eminent geographers, who is present at this meeting, Dr. Hugh

Robert Mill, gave us, a few years ago, a lecture on the "Geographical

Work of the Future," and put great stress on this, that " accurate

cartographic representation is the very essence of geography." Certainly

he was right. Accuracy of design is of paramount importance, and this is

the reason why geodesists measure the surface of the Earth with such

wonderful care and precision: a difference of a few millimetres on two

measurements of a line of base is justly a great matter of discussion,

and obliges the scientific bodies to begin the work again. Thus a

perfect exactitude is obtained in geodetic calculations, and the real

distances and proportions of all geographical features are triumphantly

made out; but the results, although fulfilling all expectations and

perfect in registers and tables, are in a certain measure practically

lost on the deceitful maps and charts: there truthful representation is

quite out of the question, at least for all parts of the figure which

are not delineated on the centre of the map. A plane surface never will

nor can be the real representation of a spherical surface. Splendid

devices may be imagined by the mathematicians to lessen the importance

of errors according to this or that dimension of the map, but although I

do not deny the immense conveniency of maps, without which there would

be no geography at all, still we may point out the errors which will

subsist, and sometimes we feel tempted to ask, "What's the use of having

secured perfect accuracy in measurement, within one millimetre, when on

paper the errors must amount to yards, furlongs, and miles?"

There is only one way to represent truly the surface of the Earth.

Curves are to be translated in curves; a sphere or fragment of a sphere

must be reproduced by another sphere or fragment of sphere. Therefore

are we really astonished that public attention and the special care of

geographers are so little attracted towards this logical mode of

geographical work.

The progress of cartography proper has been really immense. When we

compare the maps and charts which are now constructed by the various

industrial, maritime, and military staffs with the very interesting maps

of the last century, which had been also constructed with great care by

the best geographers and at very great expense, we are struck by the

marvellous increase of those documents, not only in quantity, but also

in quality. I may say that certain maps, where the scale is very large,

and which, in fact, may be considered part of an immense globe, are at

the same time so gloriously embellished by colours and graduated tints

that they are really wonderful to look at, both as true representations

of nature and as marvellous works of art. The impression which genuine

geographers feel is very near or even entirely similar to that of an

artist before a glorious picture or statue. To see nature itself, and to

behold at the same time a picture of it in perfect accordance with the

reality, is positively a rapture. As examples, there are the official

maps of Switzerland or the Bay of Naples.

But, returning to sphaerography, we must avow that there are very few

globes or segments of globes which have been made with sufficient care

to be held in comparison with the best charts. Generally they are much

less scrupulously drawn, being constructed more for show than for

science; they are less worthy of attention. Of course, some of the

elaborate globes which have been issued by various publishers are

altogether very creditable objects, but few are to be studied with the

same confidence as maps in almost all civilized countries. Some of the

globes which have been constructed are huge in dimensions. There is one

cut in a rock, I believe, on the seashore near Bournemouth, but I don't

know if it has any real value. There was one at the last Paris

Exhibition which was some 120 feet in circumference, being one-millionth

of the mother Earth to scale, and I must say this gigantic globe has

left on minds of the three hundred thousand people who saw it a very

deep impression, by the mere comparison of dry land and sea, and the

large proportions of countries which are ordinarily shown in Lilliputian

forms in most atlases. I remember, also, the real feeling of rapture

which pervaded me when, in my youth, I walked inside of Wylde's globe,

near this very place, admiring the magnificent sight. But that noble

structure, as well as the Paris Exhibition globe, made no pretence to

accuracy in geography proper; they had been designed only to be looked

at from afar, without any special study of minor details.

The Paris globe was to be seen from the outside, on a winding staircase;

the London Wylde's globe, forgotten now by our contemporaries, was seen

from the inside, and was to be contemplated at one circular glance.

According to Alfred Russel Wallace, whose opinion has such great weight,

the last method would be really the best.

I repeat it again, this department of geography, sphaerography, although

the most important to develop, has not kept pace with the other,

cartography, and I presume it will be a real revolution when it has

taken in science and practice the paramount place it deserves. At

present small globes are very much in use for schools, but we know how

that- part of the educational furniture is shamefully neglected; the

very fact that it is found in elementary classes is one cause of the

disdain in which globes are generally held. There is, perhaps, another

reason. Globes of large proportions are very cumbrous objects, and in

our crowded cities, where space is so expensive, it is very difficult to

find place for these scientific guests. And, above all, the best of

reasons is that education has not been yet directed in that way, and

people, even scientific people, are not yet sufficiently convinced of

the absolute necessity there is to study geography on images of our

planet reduced to a commodious scale and with the real proportions.

There is no geographer, however learned and accustomed to the reading of

maps, who is not constantly at a loss to understand immediately, at the

sight of charts drawn on all kinds of scales, what exact proportions the

country represented bears to his own land or district. He will not see

the real state of things; he will try to remember the figures he has

learnt by heart, or make tedious calculations, which are a great loss of

time.

So it is that for us all, learned or unlearned, the direct study of

geography on spherical surfaces is absolutely necessary. If the scale of

the globe is very small in comparison to the real dimensions; if it is,

for example, in the proportion of only one to 10 or 20 million, then the

surface is to be kept even—polished, we may say—because the roughness of

the highlands and mountains cannot be represented with sufficient

relief. On such a ball, 6 or 12 feet in circumference, the highest

mountain of Himalaya would not represent 1/25th of an inch in height,

and the ordinary hills would hardly alter the regular surface of the

globe. But, with larger spheres or fragments of spheres, another element

of truth and beauty is added to the construction; the actual relief

appears on the curvature of the model.

And here allow me to say, once for all, that the system of exaggerating

the proportional height of hills and mountains on the surface of globes

is utterly bad, contrary to real science, and ought to be discouraged by

all geographers respectful of nature and its laws. In that way the

utmost ugliness is attained; people who do that kind of work seem to

think themselves above all sense of reality. Thus we hear that the

ladies of the Philippine islands, wishing to make a valuable present,

imagined to have a representation of their archipelago made by a

jeweller with rubies for the cities, sapphires for lakes, and other

costly stones for volcanoes. Of course, many thousand pounds were

expended for that miserable rubbish.

All the pseudo-relief maps which show us slopes with two, three, fifty,

one hundred times their real proportions in height, inconsistent with

the facts, and violating the forces of gravitation, are the logical

consequence of a childish desire to represent grand sights as if they

were always stupendous, wonderful, next to miraculous. It is in the same

spirit that, during the first part of this century, before the invention

of photography, painters were prone to exaggerate in their pictures

twice, or even three times, the real proportions of mountains in

altitude; conscious in a certain measure of the deficiency of their art,

they relied on falsehood to make it more eloquent. Happily, new

discoveries have enrolled the sure, the victorious light of the sun on

the side of truth, and now we have by thousands and by millions splendid

pictures of mountains, which give to our eyes the true sense of

proportion, and certainly do not diminish our conception of beauty.

The revolution which photography has accomplished in pictorial art is to

be achieved also in relief construction. We are to be most strict in one

thing—keep always to the truth. It is the best plan in scientific work

as in life. Truth in scales: therefore it is that we must use globes

instead of maps as frequently as possible. Truth in heights of relief:

therefore do we leave entirely out of question the idea of showing any

apparent roughness on globes or fragments of globes under the scale of

one-millionth. On such balls colours and shades only will be convenient

to represent the various altitudes on the Earth and depths in the sea.

But as soon as the globe or fragment of globe is large enough to show at

least one-millionth part of the Earth in real proportions, then we may

try to represent as well the heights and depths as the planimetric

dimensions. Of course, the chiselling and moulding of the surface will

be more and more elaborate in proportion to the increase of the scale.

On a globe of one-millionth, the great masses of highlands and

mountains, 3000 feet in height, will hardly appear above the plains, and

only by the contrast of light and shade; but summits of 10,000 or 12,000

feet will be seen perfectly well-the more so, that to show forests,

pastures, snow or ice, various colours and tints will heighten the

effect as they do in reality. It the size in diameter be doubled, the

impression of the sight is increased, and the relief is represented with

much greater accuracy. If you construct a very large globe on the scale

of 1 to 100,000, then all the details of elevation and depth will appear

most distinctly, even hills and hillocks 150 feet in height. You see the

very Earth as if you were sailing above it in a balloon. The

representation of such heights, whose appearance our eyes are accustomed

to, gives us an unexpected advantage by furnishing us with a standard of

comparison. To give us an idea of the real height of a building,

photography and painters put men or women standing all around or leaning

against the pillars. Thus spectators of a relief will easily estimate,

by comparison with known heights, the real dimensions of the hills and

mountains which diversify the surface.

There has been in Switzerland lately a very interesting public

controversy. A skilful cartographer and relief maker (M. Charles Perron)

had proposed to the Federal Council to construct, for the Paris

Exhibition, a relief of Switzerland on the scale of 1 to 100,000, which,

he said, would do honour to the country; and, indeed, the samples of the

work which he exhibited at Bern and Geneva excited general admiration.

Evidently the undertaking deserved to be encouraged, and it would have

been taken under the official patronage of the Swiss Republic if a few

influential geodesists had not interfered, asserting that a true and

perfectly detailed representation of nature wanted a larger scale than

the 100,000thb. As in examples of their contention, they referred to the

parting of slopes on nearly horizontal ground; the geographical changes

brought in the configuration of a valley by the advance of a morainic

ridge; the displacement of the courses of rivers caused by landslips and

erosions—all facts of small magnitude in their origin, but of great

geographical importance, and which are to be fully represented on large

relief to be clearly understood. Pamphlets and articles were published

on both sides, and the question was fully elucidated by most competent

scholars.

Now we may resume the discussion. According to the effect which must be

attained, and the elaborate study which is aimed at, scales must be

different in globes, as also they are in all other modes of

representation, maps, charts, and plans.

If our intention is to show the majestic appearance of the Earth, with

its continents and seas, with its mountains, rivers, and plains, if it

is to give a perfect idea of the interaction and interdependence of all

organs in the grand planetary body; then, by all means, let us construct

a large globe, where we may be impressed by the mass itself, by the

harmonious forms of the countries we know, and specially love and study.

But if our aim is to show the details as, thoroughly as possible, and

the means be not sufficient to construct the globe at a convenient

scale, the only way is to model fragments or parts of sphere in

proportion of 1 to 50,000, 25,000, 20,000, 10,000, 5000, as may be

desirable. With the increase of these treasures, geographical societies

will acquire documents enough to represent in reality whole parts of the

Earth in miniature, attaining the utmost perfection, and satisfactory

both to the learned and the artists.

This is, in fact, the thing which will be done in Switzerland. Two

objects are to be attained, and therefore work will be directed in both

ways. I hear M. Perron's great work will be pushed on with great

enthusiasm, and we may hope to see, two years hence, in the Paris

Exhibition, his complete relief of Switzerland on the scale of

100,000—the most complete, and certainly the best of the kind, which

geography will possess; and, on the other side, all those who have

carefully inspected the Polytechnium in Zurich know what splendid

achievements local geodesists have made in the shape of mountain-reliefs

on very large scales, showing and explaining at the same time the

features of the country. Nowhere in the civilized world do we find so

much and so great work accomplished in the way we recommend.

Among the conquests of a proximate future, I think a better division of

labour will be introduced in geographical bodies. Already a very great

improvement has been made in the scales of maps, especially for large

geographical works. Nearly all these are now constructed according to a

scale with very convenient decimal numbers, 100,000, 50,000, 40,000,

20,000, which allow us easy arithmetical comparison, all numbers being a

multiple or a decimal fraction of another. The United States squeezed,

so to say, between two tendencies, to measure still in the ancient way,

by inches or parts of an inch to the mile, or to deal with great decimal

masses, have chosen for their maps the various scales of 250,000,

125,000, and 62,500, which last measure is so very near to the

proportion " one inch to the mile," that it may be considered as

practically the same. In reliefs, even more than in maps, the habit has

become general to take regular scales with full thousands and tens of

thousands; thus comparisons are more easily made between the various

productions. This tendency of relief-makers will, I hope, grow more and

more common, and gradually, by mutual, though informal, aareement, their

works will be made according to a few commodious patterns, and

constitute as many different parts of great globes constructed on the

same scale. If all these disjointed and scattered parts, well reproduced

and regularly exchanged between the authors and the geographical

societies, were collected and put together, the construction of entire

globes on very large scales would be found very much advanced. People

would be astonished to see what large fragments of continents in relief

we already possess, if they saw in a great hall, put in their proper

place, all the plans of the Alps, Pyrenees, and Auvergne, and other

mountainous lands. These relief constructions on large scales are the

necessary complement to the lesser globes, for whose construction we

plead urgently.

This spontaneous organization of labour which pervades the scientific

workers in the common field will prevail more and more. We see already

the various geographical societies uniting every yearmore intimately to

distribute thebusiness among themselves. Small societies have their very

important part for local efficiency, and we may expect from them

searching studies on the special questions relative to their own or

surrounding countries. Larger bodies residing in important seaports or

commercial centres have a greater field of action, and their natural

circle of study embraces especially the parts of the world which belong

to the general market of their cities; lastly, the societies, whose area

of action and reaction is the immense world at large, are invested with

a mission of high and noble import—to centralize every document

belonging to the Earth at large, and to any part of it specially; to

collect in their libraries all the books, all the pamphlets and

documents, that have been written or published anywhere in the world; to

have the entire set of maps, charts, and plans which have been

constructed and drawn by geographers and engineers in the entire world;

and especially to offer to their guests, who are, so to say, the

delegates of all mankind, a model of the Earth, under the shape of a

globe, vast in dimensions, where every man will find himself at home,

and even will learn to know his own country better than before, where he

may also indicate all possible corrections and improvements;-such a

model, in fact, which will afford a standard of scientific perfection

which human intellect and skill are able to attain. This is, I think,

what the legitimate ambition of a geographical society ought to realize,

and will certainly realize, in the proximate future.

Among all the riches which I foresee in our palaces and museums on

geography, there is one, as is implied in the subject of my lecture, to

which I look forward with an intense desire. Now, at a time when every

morning and evening newspaper brings us news from all parts of the

world; when every one of us, even the least fortunate, is fed and

clothed with productions of all continents and seas; when we all have

friends across both oceans in the antipodal countries;-the moment has

come for us to have grand representations of our common home, and not to

satisfy ourselves with petty spheres, round copper balls, similar to

that which Krates of Melos exposed to the curiosity of men in the temple

of Pergamos, twenty-one centuries ago. Now Globes must be temples

themselves, as well by the magnificence or proportions as by the beauty

of workmanship and the scrupulous care of scientific drawing. In sight

of such constructions, people must feel grave and respectful, not only

because those monuments consecrated to science will partake of its

majesty, but also because they will belong to all men, without any

privilege for race or nationality, and will help to strengthen within us

the feeling that we are one and the same family.