Reviews: Bengal in Maps

Summary

G. B. Masefield reviews S. P. Chatterjee's Bengal in Maps, a socio-economic regional atlas chiefly depicting resource distribution in West and East Bengal. The natural-vegetation map, prepared by S. K. Mukherjee, shows much of the intensively cultivated region as undifferentiated grassland. Masefield finds the combined rocks-and-soils map confusing and notes that it does not indicate the coverage of Chatterjee's soil reconnaissance traverses. He praises the clarity of the 34 pages of agricultural maps, including rice and jute distributions, and their teaching value for readers unfamiliar with Bengal. He credits Chatterjee with painstaking use of imperfect data and the publishers with working effectively within the constraints of monochrome printing and an 8½-by-11-inch page, which requires a relatively small map scale. He concludes that regional atlases are urgently needed for intelligent planning.