As there was much inclination among map makers to experiment in the matter of map projection so there was an inclination to experiment, as the years passed, in the matter of design for the globe gores. In the so-called Da Vinci gores we find them drawn in two groups of four each (Fig. 135), and instead of the globe biangle we have the globe equilateral triangle. Their application to a spherical surface could only have been made with difficulty, if at all; indeed we cannot be certain that in so outlining a map of the world the draughtsman’s intention was to use it in globe construction. The plan seems never to have been followed by any of the other map makers, or by any globe maker. We find an interesting early instance in which the gore map construction was clearly employed merely as a method for plane map making, a method having certain very commendable features (Fig. 136). The author of this map is unknown. [Illustration: Fig. 135. Gore Map of Leonardo da Vinci, ca. 1515.] [Illustration: Fig. 136. Anonymous Globe Gores in Plane Map Construction, ca. 1550.] In referring to unusual forms in gore construction attention may again be called to the map of Alonso de Santa Cruz and to that of Antonius Florianus, in which maps the plan was hemispherical,[199] the central point in the construction of each hemisphere, a northern and a southern, being the pole, the circumference of the circle in which the thirty-six gores were drawn, representing the equator. But again we do not know that such a gore map was ever employed in globe construction though the method, it seems, would lend itself to that end. It can be readily understood that numerous modifications in the matter of globe-gore construction and their application to the surface of the sphere, more or less detailed in character, were introduced as the years passed, but the modifications were by no means at all times in the line of improvement.[200] The technical skill of the present day does not surpass that which one occasionally finds exhibited in the work of some three hundred years ago.