Here is a map of a little place in the country. Two roads cross each other near five buildings.
Try to make a plan or map of the roads or streets near your schoolhouse. Can someone make this map with chalk on the floor? Perhaps it can be made in the schoolyard. Draw lines to show the school house and the schoolyard in this map. Let the lines on the map have the same direction that the roads and streets an walls have; that is, if the wall runs north and south, make the line that means the wall run north and south. Can you put on this map some other things that you see near the school or on the way to school? Now lay a piece of paper down beside this map and copy it on the paper with a pencil that makes heavy lines. Be sure you understand this plan or map. Point out the various roads or streets.
Which side of the paper is south? Mark on your paper map as it lies on the floor an arrow pointing north. North on the map is then also north in the room and forth out-of-doors. Hang the paper map up on the north wall. Hang it so that the north side of the map is toward the ceiling. Map makers usually put the north at the top of the map, so we put ours that way. You see the east is on the right, the west is on the left, the south toward the bottom.
Now take the map down and lay it on a table or desk. Point out on the map the south; the west. Turn the map part way around and again point out the directions on the map. Lay it on the floor in a new place. Hang it up on the side of the room opposite the place where you first hung it. Be sure you understand the directions on the map as it hangs in each of these places, because knowing map directions will help you greatly in all your study of geography.
21. The map of your neighborhood.— Make a map of the roads or streets on which you walk in coming from your home to your school. Can you show on your map two ways to come to school? If there is a map of your neighborhood, see if you can find on it five places that you have seen. Most of the schoolhouses in the United States are shown on good maps made by the United States Geological Survey. Write a postal card to the.United States Geological Survey, Washington, D. C., asking if there is a map showing the location of your schoolhouse. Such a map is a good thing to have. It shows the roads and streams and hills and railroads of the neighborhood, and tells how high the hills are. It costs only
ten cents.* 22. Scale of maps.—Examine this plan or map of a room. (Fig. 27.) Suppose the room is twelve feet square, and your plan of it is two inches square. Then two inches on your map show twelve feet of distance. Now make a plan of the same room that is one inch square. We have made two maps showing the same room, but the maps are of different size, or different scale. One has six feet to the inch, one has twelve feet to the inch.
All maps are drawn to some scale. If a great distance is shown by an inch of map, the map is small and we say the scale is small. If a short distance is shown by one inch, the map must be larger, and we say the scale is large. Look up some of the maps in this book and see the different scales that are used. (Figs. 40, 51, and 64.) Now look at Figure 26. Is it a large or a small scale map? With your rule, measure on the map the distance from the store to the schoolhouse. According to the scale, how many feet apart are they? How many feet is it from the storekeeper's house to the teacher's house? from the crossroads to the fork in the road? 23. Kinds of maps.—There are many kinds of maps. Some show the things nature makes, such as rivers, lakes, and islands, and the height of the country above the level of the sea. These are called physical maps. (See Fig. 48.) Find high land and low land on this map. The high land is colored brown, and the low land is colored green. Find islands, lakes, rivers.
Maps can show many things. Some show where much rain or little rain falls (Fig. 88). Others show where certain plants or animals or men are found. For instance, Fig. 60 shows where the Indians and the Eskimos live.
Some maps show the things man has made, such as cities, railroads, and the boundaries of counties, states, and coun tries. These are called political maps, and on them the different countries are often printed in different colors. (See Fig. 51.) Point out two different countries on this map. What separates them? Sometimes a boundary is a river, or a mountain, or a lake.. Sometimes it is a line which goes, right across smooth, level fields and is shown only by markers (see Fig. 23), in the same