A RELIEF MAP OF ENGLAND AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE “Srscnrott."3 SIR,—Those of us who think that England should be given a likeness of herself, of more enduring substance than paper, will be grateful to you for the powerful aid of your leader of February 24th. May I point out that, attractive as the idea is, a map made as a garden is open to serious and, in the circumstances, perhaps insuperable objections ? In the project I outlined in your issue of January 20th concrete in colour, to look more or less like the actual country as seen from a balloon, was suggested. Unless a scale of ten to twenty times the "twenty-five inch" were possible all garden plants would be disproportionately large. On the twenty-five-inch scale the Thames even in London would be some five incites wide only, a wide street one to two inches, and a country main road one-quarter inch or less in width. Roads and rivers are therefore hopelessly too narrow to be used as paths. The narrowest practicable path would be miles wide and seriously disfiguring. A garden without paths, perhaps even with them, would be cut to pieces in a few days if access were allowed. It is to be feared that a garden map is therefore impracticable, and, after all, will there not be enough among the hundreds of millions of English-speaking peoples who would care to see a real likeness of the Mother Country to wake an actual model fully worth while? If half the value and interest of the model are not to be lost, a fairly close view at any point must be possible. Why not moving cars suspended from ropeways stretched right across the map; small gyroscopically balanced monorail carriages to run over the railways ; edes to wax and wane, and to wax until the whole is flooded to the tops of the mountains, and a charming view as from mid-air be given to those who float over it in boats ? At certain times all externals would be removed and the general view from surrounding heights far and near be alone permitted. One would like to show the curvature of the earth, but this is wholly incompatible with actual water. Water round the coasts would be so attractive, both in itself and in affording the means of coasting in boats, as well as, when in flood, the view as from a balloon, that its absence would be the greater loss. With the Severn twelve feet wide near Bristol, and with eight feet between Steep Holm and Breen Down, coasting would give many a view deep into the country. Mr. Potter probably had in mind vertical scales twenty times the horizontal when be wrote that "rivers of easy gradients would be made to look like innavigable torrents, and rounded hills like Alpine spires." I had suggested a vertical scale of X3, though I think X4 better. Even X4 would giro an average slope of only about quarter-inch
drop in twenty feet of the map for the bed of an ordinary navigable river, and to the eye that looks level! It is easy to try it in the garden. Accuracy is, of course, a purely relative term, and I see no occasion to sacrifice it in any real sense to scenic effect.
But the better (the honest) scenic effect—the more vivid the impression—the greater the educational value. On the twenty- five-inch ordnance maps a little shed is marked, and you may measure your garden walls. To attempt a similar accuracy of detail would be out of place and involve a cost at least twenty times greater than that of a " map" constructed on the lines
Indicated below ; but the general grouping of houses in villages and the run of streets in towns might and should be shown. Suppose the colour scheme to be yellowish-green for the general country, dark-green for woods, dead-black for railways, a blackish line for the "Black Country " and coal mining districts, white for chalk cliffs, bluish-green for the floor of the sea under the water, short red posts every foot or two for county boundaries, and blue—perhaps of vitreous enamel—for rivers. Three com- plete seta, at cost price, I hope, of the ordnance twenty-five- inch maps would be obtained, two sets on transparent " tracing paper?' A. map is cemented on a flat board taken as a known level. Wire nails of assorted lengths are at hand, and, at the points where levels are marked on the map, nails are driven in so that their heads show the height of the ground. Modelling clay is filled into their tops and the resulting surface of the clay represents the ground. With the trans- parent map over this an outline of the various features is rapidly sketched in, and roads and rivers scored out by flat tools. For woods a plat of clay is stuck down and its top surface pressed by a die to give it an irregularly " bossy " appearance—hundreds of acres stamped in a few minutes, and towns and villages similarly, but with a different die. A mould of the clay model is easily made in plaster of Paris, and into this fine concrete of the proper colour in the different parts is poured. There results a unit square of the model itself in material which becomes as hard as stone. The back of the coloured transparent map is taken as guide, because the mould, like type for printing, is itself reversed. By the use of standard iron frames the separate blocks of the model would all be of exactly the same size, and their edges (flat sides) would correspond with the straight border line of the ordnance maps. Just as these maps placed border to border would make a complete map, so the concrete models built upon them will in their turn compose a solid map of England—a mosaic of big rectangles. The idea underlying the method is to make the greatest possible use of the existing maps; not merely to use information from them in setting out the model on the ground, but literally to build on them physically as ground plan, and afterwards to transfer, directly from them on to the surface, the features of the country—to use them almost like a " transfer " or an already engraved plate.—Fam, Sir, &c.,
W. BREMNER DAVIS.
[Our correspondent's plan is moat ingenious, and the result would be no doubt very instructive. We cling, however, in spite of Mr. Davis's criticism, to the idea of "The Garden of England:" The Thames would no doubt be too narrow for a path, but the Thames Valley would not. The path, wide enough to walk in, wonld run up as far as, say, Lechlade, and in the Middle would be a little runnel; five inches wide at London, ..to represent the river. Its tiny bridges, not to walk on, but to look at, would be a delight to all children, whether grown-up. or of tender years.—En. Spectator.]
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