A new national atlas

Summary

The reviewer places the first instalment of the Atlas of France among the small number of national atlases that bring together a country's geographical distributions. Prepared by the French National Committee for Geography, formed in 1920, it was intended to synthesize France in map form through professional geographers' collaborative research and to reach a broad cultivated readership. The reviewer suggests that the corresponding British committee could usefully emulate this work. Of the sixteen plates published, eight form two maps at 1:1,250,000, each divided into four overlapping sections: relief and population density by commune in 1931. The reviewer calls the relief map a masterpiece, crediting its compilers de Martonne, Chollay and Perret and the Service Géographique de l'Armée, which drew and printed it. Its layer colours, rivers and physical-feature names include districts important to human geography. The population map is praised for its striking use of eight colours in spectrum order, ending in purple for urban densities.