Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/504

478 parsonage or a schoolhouse must be built, it is done, not by the minister or teacher, but by the people. The oak-bark is often worth more than all the rest of the wood of a forest. In starting pine-forests the cones are planted thickly in furrows, and, after the first weeding-out, are left untouched for ten years, at which time alternate trees are cut. This process is repeated every five years, till at the end of thirty years all the trees are cut; the successive cuttings being divided among the corporators.

When any one wishes to build a house in E——, he sends word to the village court, describing the kind of house and where it is to be constructed. Notices are then posted in the village, and, if no one sends written objections to the court before the expiration of fifteen days, the building is allowed, and can not be interfered with. It will be seen that the population of E—— consists of two classes: the few more fortunate, who possess village rights, and draw from these an income which considerably increases their comfort; and the less fortunate, but more numerous, who possess no share in the communal property. But no social distinction, so far as I could see, obtains between these two classes.

 

HE materials for the history of cartography, or the art of map-making, are scanty. I propose to give a brief account of what we knew about it before the time of Gerard Krehmer, better known by his Latinized name of Mercator, who produced a large map of the world more than three centuries ago.

It is generally thought that the art of pictorial representation is older than the art of writing, and, if this be so, it is probable that the art of representation by maps is very ancient. Such delineations are in use among very primitive peoples. The Esquimaux understood the charts of Parry and Ross, and the North American Indians make rude maps, which they find serviceable to them.

One of the earliest things known in the nature of a map is the ground-plan of a town, now in the Koyunjik Gallery of the British Museum, which has been identified by Mr. Loftus as representing with minute accuracy the ground-plan of Susa, the Shushan of the Bible, a city of remote antiquity, situated on one of the streams that flow 