contours, it being also required to show buildings, land lines, character of cultivation, timber, etc. The sections taken by the different parties joined, with the camp located near the center of the territory occupied.

The month's program consists of about two days of reconnoissance for triangulation points, so chosen as to tie the work of all parties together, with lines from one half mile to two miles long; three days in the reading of angles, using both a Fauth transit reading to ten seconds, and a Fauth altazimuth reading to single seconds; two days of leveling between triangulation points, with check lines; ten to twelve days of stadia work with about 500 side shots to the square mile, and three days on notes, using a Colby Slide Rule for reductions, and on a field plat on a scale of 400 feet to the inch. A base of 3,000 to 4,000 feet is measured with a 500 foot tape and observations are made for azimuth.

The triangulation net has not been solved in camp every year. In the fall term each party makes a final plat on a scale of 250 feet to the inch.

The students plan their own work and make their own checks, finding their own errors so far as possible. An instructor and assistant are in general charge and are ready to help out of difficulties, giving their time to the different parties as they may need it; but the students are made to feel their responsibility in the conduct of the work. The head of each party, especially, learns very soon that the character and progress of the work depends on him, and there naturally arises, as the work goes on, a pride in getting good checks and in keeping well up with or even ahead of

the others. For the first few days some young men have needed a little urging, but the necessity for that disappears after the work is well under way.

There are two objects governing the choice of this method for summer work. The chief consideration is the educational one. The topographical survey is used firstly, because of the variety of its different steps; reconnoissance, putting up and maintaining signals, leveling, transit and stadia work, angle reading, sketching, the use of the slide rule, base work, adjusting instruments and standardizing rods, solar work, adjustment of observations, platting; secondly, because so small a number of students can constitute a party. The instrumental practice and all the details of the survey get hold of each student to a greater degree than is possible with any other form of survey. The Freshman, who knows nothing of surveying at the beginning of the month, learns much about instruments and details of work. He knows what it is to cut underbrush, drive stakes, put up poles, to carry a stadia rod ten hours a day, and, not least by any means, he learns to take orders and to obey. Moreover, about camp, his natural inquisitiveness turns his chief into a teacher who initiates him into the mysteries of instrumental construction or method. The men that have been in camp can be readily picked out from the members of the class in surveying that comes regularly in course in the Sophomore year.

When the student, a year later, takes his instrument or his party, he knows how to give orders, for he learned how to take them the year before. He knows in a quite definite way what is expected of his

verses.

party, and he tackles the problem of his own ground confidently. Within a couple of days he has the entire work planned, knowing where he expects to place his triangulation points and how to run his stadia traHe may subsequently change these to adapt them to the work of other parties. He may not always make the best locations and choose the best lines, but he generally finds out how they could have been bettered. The essential point remains that the work is his own.

This placing of responsibility on the young men acts differently with different temperaments. It strengthens the timid and checks the carelessness of the overconfident. The hasty man is brought up short by a traverse that will not check out, or even agree with itself on a second trial, and may be inclined to lay all the trouble to the instrument. But when he finally makes a good line with one minute's error in azimuth and a tenth or two in elevation, his respect for his transit is augmented at the expense of his estimate of his own ability. These blunders, and they are numerous every season, are not the least valuable means of instruction. A student will gain more from them, both as to technical matters and as to character, than from a system involving too close supervision on the part of the instructors. Not every error is found by the student, but often it needs only a question from the instructor to open up the way for its discovery and it is rarely necessary for him to make a complete investigation of notes or to re-run a

traverse.

The comparison and weighing of the relative im

portance of errors, and adapting checks on the several parts of the work to the character of it as a whole, proves a good exercise.

This continuous practice also brings the student into contact with the little difficulties connected with instrumental work, the moods and whims of his instrument, as well as its permanent peculiarities. He finds out about the run of tangent screws, the clouding of glasses, the effect of a hot day on centers and takes the thing to pieces to find why the verniers will rise above the plate. There are many items, not learned in the class room or the ordinary field practice, that come to him through his own work or through the conversation about camp. Some may think it unsafe to trust instruments to the hands of the students to the extent here used, but the writer has had no trouble. The students understand that they will have to pay for the result of any carelessness on their part, and this has been a sufficient safeguard.

Another advantage of the plan is the close association of instructors with students of different classes in the jolly camp life. The camp outfit, by the way, is a good one, with heavy duck for tents, cots for beds, a stove, and plenty of tinware. Being permanent for the month, there is no expense for teams except at the beginning and end, and as the University furnishes the incidentals, the cost to the student is limited to the table requirements, $10 to $12. The camp life proves healthful and adds a little spice to the serious work that fills ten hours of each day. If an area of more than five or six square miles was to be covered, either

the employment teams would be necessary, or the camp should be divided, the latter being the better plan.

According to the writer's experience, one instructor can handle at least four parties, provided the head of each has been out at least one year before.

The second reason for choosing this particular plan was a desire to obtain the data for a topographical map of the country immediately surrounding the University; this had a rolling surface, broken by large streams and bluffs, was about two hundred feet high and well adapted for instructional purposes. It was further thought that students would take more interest in the work if it had some object other than the giving of instruction.

Most of the ground covered in the three years has been or can be platted. One or two parties did not have time enough in the month they were in the field to untangle all of the snarls they got into, and as the camp is shifted each season, there has been no opportunity as yet to fill in these gaps. The work of the students is variable, with errors of azimuth ranging from nothing to several degrees, or from a tenth to several feet in elevation. But with the lines of a mile in length corrected to within five minutes of azimuth, and a maximum difference between the level and stadia elevations of a half foot, with the former checked upon themselves within a tenth or two, good maps showing five foot contours can and have been made; and where the work of different parties has been adjacent it has joined well. In angle reading, better work has been done with a transit reading to ten seconds than with the altazi