[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.1 SIR,—I do not dispute
any of the statements in the letter of Messrs. Cornish Brothers in last week's Spectator, but they seem to me completely to miss the true point. Here is an illustration which will clearly show this. On a certain Friday, the weather being apparently settled, I decide to take a week- end walk in Sherwood Forest. But, on going to my map- shelf, I find the needful sheet is missing. I live in a small town of fifteen thousand inhabitants, and on calling at Messrs. W. H. Smith's railway bookstall and asking for the inch or half-inch Ordnance Survey sheet for the district, the clerk replies : " We only get Ordnance maps down for order. I can have what you want here in two or three days." (That is, it will be ready for me when I return from my trip, and have no further use for it.) " But," he adds, " we keep a stock of Bartholomew's half-inch contour maps," and he reaches down a pile of two or three dozen, and my want is supplied as simply and easily as if I had asked for the current number of the Times.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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