Geological Maps of Baden

Abstract

IT may interest some of your readers likely to visit the Black Forest, that Herr Winter, of Heidelberg, has begun the issue of an official series of geological maps, each 19½ × 17½ inches, with memoir. Two are already out, one east of Heidelberg, the other giving the Mooswald district, north-east of Gengenbach. The scale is 1:25000; i.e. 10 cm. to 2½km., or practically two and a half inches to the mile. Three sections are given on the sheet; the memoir has about 100 pages. The price for the map and memoir is only two marks; if the map is mounted, three marks. I had intended to comment on the contrast between this marvellous cheapness and our own Survey issues, as our inch ordnance cannot approach this for detail; for instance, the contour lines are given for every ten metres. But a paragraph read to-day in the New York Nation of August 9, in a letter signed “W. M. D.” will speak for me:—“… unfortunately the publications of the British Surveys are rarely found complete at home outside of the Governmental bureaus in Washington. Very few copies of the British geological reports and maps are presented to libraries in foreign countries, and the prices at which they are sold practically forbids their purchase. The maps are, moreover, coloured by hand, so every copy is expensive; while ours are lithographed, and ‘additional copies’ are of only nominal cost, perhaps three or four cents apiece.… The British practice almost seals up the costly results of the geological surveys.… It was a satisfaction to learn that this opinion, formed at home, was shared and emphatically expressed over here” (at Edinburgh).