Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/122

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National Geographic Magazine.
  1. The topographic work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey will be utilized as far as it extends.
  2. The survey will be executed in a manner sufficiently elaboorate to construct a topographic map on a scale of 1 : 62,500.
  3. The topographic reliefs will be represented by contour lines with vertical intervals varying from ten to fifty feet, as such intervals are adapted to local topography.
  4. As sheets are completed from time to time copies of the same will be transmitted to the commission.
  5. When the work is completed and engraved for the Geological Survey, the Commission, or other State authorities, may have, at the expense of the State, transfers from the copper plates, thus saying the State the cost of final engraving.
  6. The survey will be prosecuted at the expense of the Geological Survey for the months of July, August and September. During the last half of the month of September the Commission shall examine the work executed up to that time, and if the results, methods and rates of expenditure are satisfactory to the Commission, the expenses of the work for the month of October shall be borne by the State of Massachusetts, for the month of November by the Geological Survey, and the work thereafter shall continue to be paid alternately by months, by the Geological Survey, and the State of Massachusetts severally. But as the larger expense incident to the beginning of the work is imposed on the Geological Survey, at the close of the work the State of Massachusetts shall pay such additional amount as may be necessary to equalize the expenditures; provided that the total expenditure of the State of Massachusetts shall not exceed forty thousand dollars ($40,000); and if the completion of the survey of the State of Massachusetts and the preparation of the necessary maps on the plan adopted by the survey shall exceed in amount eighty thousand dollars ($80,000), then such excess shall be wholly paid by the Geological Survey.

The commissioners suggested some minor amendments to this proposition, which were accepted, and under these provisions work was commenced and carried forward continuously to its completion. The field work of the state was finished with the close of the season last fall, and the drawing of the maps is now substantially done. The work was done in the field with such accuracy and such degree of detail as to warrant the publication of the map upon a scale of one inch to a mile, or, what is prac-