WCP2754

[1]

27, rue du Lac, Brussels

12. V.[May] [18]96

My dear Sir,

I have now under my hand the May number of the Contemporary Review¹ which I had read before in a public reading room.

First I must tell you that I completely agree with you in believing that the hollow globe would be certainly much cheaper and more impressive than the globe which I projected. I have seen many times the Wylde's Globe in Leicester Square and I have been very much struck by it. Still, I continue pleading for my plan, and I will give you my reasons at the end of this letter. But I want beforehand to insist on my true and present object. The globe is only in the far future, in the dim immeasurable distance, I show it as an ideal, but my immediate object is given page 9 of my pamphlet:

1^o. To catalogue the relief-maps on the 100000^th scale or on larger one which exists already;

[2] 2^o. To reduce all these plans to the common scale of 100000^th and to give them the real incurvation;

3^o. To complete those plans already constructed by the other parts of the globe for which we possess already sufficient detail maps, and which represent about the tenth part of the continental surface.

This is for the [illeg.], the great, the practical work, and it is to give more force to my argument that I speak of the ultimate result which will be the construction of the great globe composed of all the fragments constructed in various countries. Actually my action is an earnest propaganda in order to urge all the geographical societies to begin with the construction of their special part in the general work. I have already the great joy to know that the figuration of Scotland has begun on their plan by Mr Patrick Geddes,² and the Town and Gown Association, under that [illeg.], the work will be, I am sure, pushed on with great energy, In Switzerland, where the good [3] elements for that work are so numerous, the construction of the relief map has also been begun on the same plan, and with these two examples in my hands, I will plead in other countries. In Belgium, I hope that very soon there will be also a beginning of a similar work. And so on, every year will carry on its burden and our descendants will build the great globe, yours or mine.

Yours has perhaps more chance and I will be quite pleased with it; but as in a future society, which, let us hope, will be brotherly, and where time will be left for noble works of all kinds, I fervently desire that my plan will be examined with due consideration.

First, it seems more natural to me to look the surface of the earth from outside, with its mountains, streams, seas, forests and towns.

Secondly, the relief is much better seen from outside, as the tangent light only may show the gentlest undulations, and as inside no tangent light can be drawn to the surface.

[4] Thirdly. In pondering over my idea, I came to the conclusion that the inside of the globe ought ^{to be}, as it is in nature itself, the representation of the geological formations. Outside the relief, inside the works, as far as they are known and with the colours accepted by the congress of Bologna. It seems to me this would be a grand sight and give an impression analogous to the sight of earth itself as the geological and geographical facts correspond on both sides.

There are other considerations which might be exposed, but they are of less importance to me and may be kept for a pamphlet, if I have the occasion to write it. But I tell you, my aim, my immediate aim is to give an impetus to the construction of relief maps with the true curvature and true proportions on a topographical and metrical scale, and I am overjoyed to think that you give me your powerful aid for this plan. If you bring English geographers to continue the work already begun in Scotland, you will do much for an enterprise of which [continues in left margin] has even a social bearing, in destroying that ordinary cartography, which everywhere shows one's own place as being the centre of the world.

With the expression of my deep respect | Elisée Reclus³ [signature]