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L. GIBBS
There is a
The new maps are essentially military maps. A grid system, no doubt designed primarily to enable the O. C. to tell the battery commander exactly where to plump a shell, may however be used to locate a few defects which, though perhaps of little account from a military point of view, de- tract considerably from the value of the maps for ordinary topographical purposes. Taking the Tai Po sheet, a district with which the writer is well acquainted. At East 177, North 718 is shown a large village, but with no The 21⁄2 inch map incorrectly name. This is the village of Lin Au. named it Lung Om. At East 205, North 714 and 717 are shown two more nameless villages. These should be named Sheung Wong ! Au and Ha Wong I Au. In the 21⁄2 inch map the names are transposed. difficulty with place names where two dialects are spoken, but a beginner in Chinese knows that Sheung means upper" and "Ha,” At East 213, North 742 is shown the village of Fung Yuen. There should At surely be a considerable patch of woodland on the hillside behind it, East 196, North 768 the village of Wan Shan Ha is unaccountably omitted. The writer of this note once lived in a house shown at East 226 North 710. This It appears on the map in front of the name Tai Po Kau Lo Wai, name has got adrift, it belongs to the one remaining house of the old village near the west entrance of the Tai Po tunnel. A well marked topographical feature like the Lam Tsun Valley should be named on a map of this scale. (It is a most beautiful valley too. See it in April or in July, with its brilliant green paddy fields and many villages among their dark fung-shui trees, all backed by the fine massif of Tai Mo Shan).
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lower."
It is a pity that maps based on high class survey work, chock-a-block with azimuths and co-ordinates and assisted by one of the greatest inven- tions (so far) of the Century-mechanical flying-should be marred by errors and omissions which an intelligent schoolboy could rectify.
Conventional signs " distinguish between Coniferous and Deciduous Woodland. But this differentiation does not hold in South China where the bulk of the non-coniferous trees are evergreens. The colouring of woodland green, with a definite edging of dots makes a distinction on the map which seldom exists on the ground, where woodland as often as not merges into scattered trees and scrub. The green colour might be omitted with economy and advantage.
It would perhaps be scarcely fair to make a comparison between the maps of Hong Kong and the Ordinance Survey of England and Wales, but as, at the time of writing, the first sheet of a new edition of the 1 inch to the mile maps of the latter survey has appeared, some account of these maps may be of interest. The sheet just published covers an area of 30 miles by 18 miles in the neighbourhood of Plymouth and can be had mount- ed to fold for 4 shillings. The streams are printed in blue. A new style of lettering for the place names has been adopted and the different classes of roads are clearly shown, but the most important innovation is an attempt to show by pale hachure shading and pale colouring the relief of the country. The maps are in fact called the Fifth (Relief) Edition." The old 1 inch maps of 50 years ago—showed relief by hachures only. This system was fairly effective for showing up mountainous country and for indicating the
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
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Maps of Hong Kong
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direction of a range of hills, but, except for an occasional figure printed at a summit or at a cross road it gave no indication of the actual height above sea level. Then came an edition with contours, mostly 100 feet apart and Popular Edition in which the contours were 50 feet apart and were printed brown and the woods coloured green. A few sheets of this popular edition were coloured to show relief and called Tourist Maps.'
This relief colouring commenced with green at the sea level, a paler tint of green This brown tint at 100 feet was followed by a pale brown at 200 feet. was continued to the hill tops, gradually increasing in darkness at each 100 feet of altitude. This is an admirable system for showing topography, a glance shows what is high land and what is low land, and as the contours are printed and figured the actual levels can also be ascertained. One would expect it to be an expensive process but the maps produced were sold at 4 shillings each, the same price as those of the new edition. The drawback to this layer colouring is that if you continue up to 3,000 feet a colour scheme which adequately shows the relief at 600 or 800 feet, you will, by the time you have reached the 3,000 feet summits have obtained so dark a tint as almost to obliterate the printed features of the map. In the new maps a clear representation of topography, which might have been obtained by layer colouring, appears to have been sacrificed to artistic effect. On the cover also, beauty, or what is no doubt thought to be beauty is placed be- fore utility. An ornate representation of the Royal Arms takes the place which should be occupied by a key map. There is no reason that this key map should not be made just as pleasing to look upon as the representation of the Royal Arms. It seems that economy might be effected by omitting the green colour of the woodlands. These are quite clearly shown by the printed representations of trees. Beyond, these criticisms one can have nothing but praise for the new maps, and can only express the hope that they will soon be available for the country at large, where the stoppage
of map making brought about by the war and the rapid growth of suburban building in the country, involved in the post war exodus from the towns, has left the last edition of the 1 inch maps so far out of date as to be almost useless in many places for finding ones way about.
(1) Geographical Journal.
May 1937.
(2)
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February 1928. September 1926.
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