All this leads finally and directly to the question, "What about the lice of man?" And here the evolutionist may rub his hands together in satisfaction. For here in the most interesting place of all the theory works! The lice of man do indeed find their nearest relatives in the lice of the apes and monkeys. In fact, it is even possible that lice of some of the apes are really the same species that occurs on man. Nor can the argument that here we are probably dealing with one of those exceptions that I have mentioned hold, for the facts throughout are entirely too consistent with each other.

So the evolutionist who, heedless of the fair name of his species, would derive man from some ape-like ancestor finds here another bit of support for his theories. He finds another stone for the defending wall that piece by piece has been built about them. Nor will this wall, like the walls of Jericho, crumble before the blasts of its enemies' trumpets. Not even before the most silver tongued of them.

I would like to close this with a moral, but morals have gone out of fashion and then it is obvious enough, anyway.

TOPOGRAPHICAL MAPS OF THE UNITED STATES

By Professor WILLIAM MORRIS DAVIS

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

HE United States Geological Survey is still engaged in pre

TH

paring a topographic map of our country. Progress thus far made is summarized on a large two-sheet map of the United States, on a scale of 1:240,000 or 40 miles to an inch, which serves as an index for all the quadrangles surveyed and published up to 1921; but, as a matter of fact, there are large areas in certain western states which are here marked off as surveyed, but which are represented only by maps published nearly 40 years ago, on so small a scale and of such inferior workmanship that their areas must soon be surveyed again more worthily. The contrast between the vague, sketchy contours of those early maps and the minutely intricate and apparently accurate contours of the newer maps marks the advance in topographic standards during the interval of nearly half a century.

But Americans as a rule are still topographically uneducated. They are accustomed to "flat" maps, on which the form of the land surface, the "relief" as it is technically called, is either not represented at all, or else so badly represented that it might better remain unrepresented. Automobilists are coming to know something of the ascents and descents on the roads that they follow; but most of them are still so inexperienced in or distracted from the observation of the landscape that they do not look at it closely or attentively; and even if they do, they hardly see what they look at. The driver of a car of course should not be expected to turn his attention far to the right or left; but his fellow travellers may do so, and they would be greatly aided in seeing the country they traverse by carrying along the topographic maps of their route. The cost of the maps is very low; an inquiry addressed to the director of the U. S. Geological Survey at Washington will bring information concerning maps published for any desired part of the country.

If distance lends enchantment to some views, appreciation lends enjoyment to many others, and appreciations of landscape views is greatly increased by the possession of a good map. As examples

of the contrasts between different parts of the country, look at the map of the Brasua Lake quadrangle, next west of Moosehead lake in Maine, where the brooks, many of them called "streams, have a well-defined flow only in their steep descents from the uplands, while in the lower lands they are for the most part either delayed in swamps or stopped in lakes; or of the Williamsport quadrangle, Pennsylvania, where the drainage is so well developed that neither lake nor swamp is to be found, and where the single or double ridges, running in the zigzag pattern of the Alleghenies, prevail with occasional enclosed limestone valleys, of which Nippenose is a perfect type; or of the Rives Junction quadrangle, Michigan, where the surface is agitated in the minute inequalities of morainic topography with many kettles and ponds; or of the Craig quadrangle, Missouri-Nebraska, where the boundary between the state of Missouri and Nebraska follows a former course of the Missouri river, which has now changed its channel to the right or left, thus inconveniently leaving patches of each state on the wrong side of the river; or of the Natchez quadrangle, where the uplands east of the Mississippi are cut into a labyrinth of intricately branching ravines as they fall off to the broad flood plain in which the great river swings in large meanders; or of La Sal Vieja quadrangle on the coastal plain of Texas, where the smooth surface has no valleys and very few hills, but is pitted by countless depressions, small and large, holding wet or dry lakes. The variety of topography is infinite; the lover of mountain and valley, of forest and stream will find no end of enjoyment in striving to apprehend its many expressions.

None of the maps are more remarkable than those which represent the slopes of the great volcanic island of Hawaii. Several of these have already been published, and four more soon to be completed are now issued as "advance sheets, subject to correction,' on a scale of 1:31,680 with 10-foot contours incompletely drawn. Two of these sheets include parts of the Kau Forest Reserve and a stretch of the Volcano Road that leads from Hilo on the east coast southwestward to the cauldron of Kilauea. All these sheets reveal admirably the long continuity of the gradual slope by which the volcano descends from its great height, the minute ravines incised with sub-parallel courses down the slope, the occasional ragged lava surfaces where the contours are given a minutely serrate pattern, the occasional oblique or radial scarps which seem to indicate fractures and displacements in the huge mass, and most striking of all a vast bulging or convex slope, skirted around its southeastern base by the Volcano Road, which contradicts the general idea that volcanic slopes are concave. If these sheets are

continued so that, when mounted together, they may include a large share of the island, they will afford an unequaled illustration of volcanic topography on a large scale.

One of the several ways in which the newer maps are improved over the earlier ones is in the addition of submarine contours, with the same vertical intervals as those on the land, for quadrangles on the ocean and lake coasts. Thus the Cape San Martin quadrangle, California, shows the bold slopes of the Santa Lucia range, which descends to the Pacific with crowded 50-foot contour lines, to be adjoined by a gently inclined sea-floor plain with wide-spaced 50-foot contour lines across a breadth of from two to four miles off shore, before a moderate slope to deeper water begins. In strong contrast therewith, the Portsmouth quadrangle shows the sea bottom off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine to be almost as undulating as the land, although, perhaps because soundings are scattered, the texture of the submarine undulations is drawn in a coarser pattern than that of the terrestrial surface. The manifest reason for the contrast between these samples of Pacific and Atlantic borders is that the shallow sea bottom along the California coast has been uninterruptedly subjected to normal marine agencies -waves and currents-by which land-derived detritus is smoothly distributed; while the sea bottom near the New England coast has been recently, as the earth counts time, subjected to glaciation.

Another novelty on the recent maps is the addition of the numbers and subdivisions of the rectangles, over 900 in all, into which the whole country has been divided by the War Department. These rectangles measure one degree of latitude on the sides and one degree of longitude at the top and bottom; they are numbered from north to south in successive columns, beginning on the Pacific coast. Each rectangle is divided into north and south halves; and each half into four quarters (I, northwest; II, northeast; III, southwest; IV, southeast). Thus the Conejos, Colo., quadrangle of the Geological Survey nomenclature, on a scale of 1:96,000, is the 298-S-II & IV quadrangle of the War Department. When the scale is large, the numerical nomenclature is somewhat unhandy; thus the Firebaugh, Calif., quadrangle of the Survey on a scale of 1:31,680, is the 60-N-II-W/2-SW/4 quadrangle of the War Department.

Outline maps of the states have been called for and prepared in recent years on a scale of 1:500,000. All are now completed, except that Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico are in press, and Texas is yet to be drawn. These maps will doubtless be issued eventually with contours, but for the present the map of such a state as South Dakota shows only its rivers and streams, many of

which are printed in broken lines to show their intermittent flow, its railroads, its county and village names, and its township and section rectangles as marked off years ago by the Land-Survey preliminary to selling the public lands. Many of our state maps in the central and western parts of the country are based on those crude surveys, which served their purpose well enough when they were honestly made in plain country, but in rough country the case was different. One of the recently issued Geological Survey maps of a quadrangle in a mountainous state explains in a legend at the bottom of the sheet that the township and sectional rectangles of the Land Survey for a part of the area are omitted "because land plats and topography can not be reconciled and no [section] corners can be found." This recalls a story of early days in California, told by the late Professor Brewer of Yale, who was in the 60's a member of the California Geological Survey. A desperado, at last captured after many deeds of violence, was about to be hanged by a vigilance committee. When asked if he had anything on his mind which he wished to confess, he said he had; but it was not his manifold murders that troubled him. The only misdeeds to which he owned up with remorse had been committed while he was an assistant on the Land Survey; the law required that the corners of the square-mile sections should be marked with wooden posts, charred at one end and driven into the ground; the desperado confessed that, in a district where wood was scarce, he had marked the section corners with burnt matches. We are only about halfa-century climb up from that rung in the ladder of our civilization. One of the most characteristic signs of our ascent to a higher level is the preparation of a large number of excellent maps of our domain, some examples of which are noted above.