Professor Elisee Reclus, greatest of geographers, gave a lecture at
the Royal Geographical Society on Monday, in which he pleaded for the construction of a giant globe with its markings outside, and all distances and altitudes in their proper proportion, as essential to geographical study. No flat surface can represent curves. Sir Clements Markham agreed with him, and if the money can be ob- tained, the Geographical Society will give the project every support. The globe should, it is said, be 42 ft. in diameter, and as it must revolve, should be built of the lightest material available. That a globe is much more instructive than a map is true, as it is also true that teachers of late years have rather neglected using it; but we do not quite see the use of so grandiose and costly a structure. A student can learn the true relation of places from a three-foot globe, and sizes and altitudes might surely be taught in bits. What stops the geographers from making a map of Cuba, say, 10 ft. by 4 ft., and curved as Cuba is in reality:curved ? The true comparative altitude of every hill and the size of every plain could then be ascertained at a glance. With a three-foot globe to indicate its locality in the world, and the curved map for details, one could surely learn nearly enough of the geography of Cuba. People nowadays want things so un- manageably big.
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