To the accounts of scientific travelers, may be added those maps and globes which indicate the contour and the vertical elevations and depressions of the earth or its divisions. The demand for perfect accuracy in these is now very great. The map must be a portrait, not a caricature. In its way, the map has a certain dictatorial authority; it is so decisive in its very character, that errors in it are far more dangerous than in the letter-press of books. The English excel in the beauty of their maps: there are none in the world engraved with the rare excellence of theirs; but their care to secure accuracy is not commensurate. The French and the Germans vie for the honor of perfectly transcribing nature. THE SCIENCES ILLUSTRATIVE OF GEOGRAPHY. The sciences which are called in to illustrate the thorough study of geography have largely increased in number within the past few years. They are, for the most part, the same which illustrate history; to which may be added mathematics and natural history. It is a very great mistake to suppose that all that bears upon geography can be crowded within the covers of a single book. It is commonly supposed that geography is a matter of memory. Even in its elementary forms, it is capable of a constructive treatment. Many a teacher, who has not paid special attention to this department, dreams that he can qualify himself by running through a single text-book. No philologist would dream that, with a grammar and dictionary, he could grasp any constructive theory of language. There must first be the study, comparatively, of the great classes. And in geography, the personal study of the earth, with critical closeness, and in the comparative method, is the true way. Another very common error is, that geography must subsidize what is most striking in other sciences, and thereby gain its charms and attain its uses. Thus geography becomes everything—history, statistics, statecraft, physics, a catalogue of all the possessions of natural history, in all its kingdoms. It takes on all colors, and meanwhile loses its own. It merges all its individuality in other provinces. In no way can it escape this disintegrating force, unless by holding fast to some central principle of being; and that is the relation of all the phenomena and forms of nature to the human race. It cannot exist, if it is to be merely an aggregate of all science, a mosaic of all colors. It is to use the whole circle of sciences to illustrate its own individuality, not to exhibit their peculiarities. It must make them all give a portion, not the whole, and yet must keep itself single and clear.