The Atlas of Britain: Subjects not susceptible to mapping

Summary

D. P. Bickmore and M. A. Shaw discuss ten subjects omitted from The Atlas of Britain, which contains 200 pages of maps covering 217 topics. During ten years of planning and compilation, additional topics were studied, their sources examined and experimental mapping attempted. Following the atlas’s “Notes and Sources” approach, the article reviews biological distributions, especially fauna; atmospheric pollution; gravity surveys; blood groups; educational facilities; hospitals; unemployment; industries beyond the 80 included; existing urban land use; and ecclesiastical and judicial boundaries. The authors qualify the atlas’s claim to comprehensiveness and identify two concerns: deficiencies in collected resource data, and wasteful mapping of subjects that reproduce geographical patterns already shown by more basic topics. They present these concerns as qualifications on using maps and atlases for comprehensive scientific and economic analysis.