Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/353

Rh and others have seen and approved, and is much discussed by the well-informed; but which I must say I feel skeptical about."

What a contrast! The steam navigation of that date and today; from the first rude paddles of the river steamboat to the triple screws of the transatlantic greyhounds! One naturally asks, "Are we to-day on the verge of a still greater navigation, that of the air?" No modern Madison may yet write that some General W has seen and approved, but the signs of its advent are multiplying so rapidly that he would not say, "I feel skeptical about it." If these two alert minds were again on earth, we can fancy Jefferson, always so keenly alive to practical application of knowledge, discussing the outlook as follows:

The meteorologists are exultant. In that latest instrument of the electrical engineer, the telautograph, they see the chance for an advance equal to that made when the first synoptic weather map was drawn. Simultaneity of observation can be improved upon. Instead of sending the observations in cipher twice or thrice per day, continuous records in installments can be sent. But even more than this, the map can be drawn in many places at once. The map is issued daily at a score of cities in the United States. A map is also issued daily at Brussels, Paris, London, Zurich, Hamburg, Rome, Munich, Vienna, Chemnitz, Madrid, Algiers, St. Petersburg, Simla, Brisbane, Sydney, Tokio, and Cape Town. Now one step further. Shall there ever he one great central weather office and one great daily weather map for the whole world, drawn not in one hut a hundred cities at the same moment? Does this seem visionary? It is vastly less so than the actual system in operation for the past twenty years would have seemed to the two colonial gentlemen who more than a century ago read their barometers and thermometers simultaneously and speculated on the possibility of propulsion by steam.

exact delineation by trigonometrical measurement as the crowning work of geography, Mr. Clements R. Markham pointed out, in a recent lecture, that the exact mapping of the land surface of the globe is still very incomplete, while the delineation of the bed of the ocean has hardly begun. The greatest unknown areas lie in the polar regions Even in Europe there remains scope for detailed survey in many countries. In Africa the unexplored has been diminishing very rapidly, but considerable areas are still virgin. Asia has much new ground to break into. The valleys of HadramantHadhramaut [sic] in Arabia are almost as little known as the antarctic regions. Lhassa has been unvisited by Englishmen for generations, and a vast region in northwestern Thibet is still a blank on our maps. Nepaul is little known; Kafiristan is absolutely secluded from the European. The maze of mountain ranges and river valleys east of the Himalayas has yet to be unraveled, and the whole interior of Indo China is full of opportunities for research. Korea is yet far from being fully known. The great Malay Archipelago must receive more attention.