Evaluating ManuscriptsAuthor(s): David M. SmithSource: Area, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1974), pp. 207-208Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20000878 .

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Observations

Topical perspectives from the

readers of area

Ecology of quarries B. N. K. Davis writes: I am embarking on a national survey of chalk and limestone quarries and want to relate the plants and animals they contain chalk and limestone quarries and want to to geographical and historical data. I should like to contact anyone who has studied dates and methods of woiking quarries particularly those operated with in the past hundred years and would also be grateful for references to published information in this field.

Monks Wood Experimental Station (Institute of Terrestrial Ecology)

Abbots Ripton, Huntingdon PE17 2LS

Loschian landscapes filmed M. J. Wise writes: The report in Area (6 (1974), 1, 39) on ' Audio-Visual materials for higher educa tion ' quotes the British Universities Film

Council as writing that ' of the great volume of audio-visual material now available in this country, only a compara tively small proportion is suitable for university level work'.

In this context Nigel Spence's film Loschian Landscapes is a recent attempt to provide a film specially oriented to the needs of undergraduate students of economic geography and spatial analysis. How to explain Losch's concept of the rotation of market area nets to form' city rich ' and ' city poor ' sectors has long been a stumbling block to even the most devoted teachers of location theory. Reactions from student audiences at LSE to this part of the film have been enthusi astic. The film opens with sequences

illustrating Losch's concepts of the formation of market areas and of the flexible central place hierarchy. There are clear possibilities for extending the use of film to other aspects of teaching in human geography; the chief difficulty appears to be the amount of time, energy and money taken up in producing such a 30-minute film. Details of hiring and purchasing arrangements may be obtained from the University of London Audio

Visual Centre, 11 Bedford Square, London WClB 3RA who are to be commended on their enterprise.

London School of Economics

Evaluating manuscripts David M. Smith writes: Last week I was offered ?12 by a leading British publisher for the evaluation of part of a book manuscript. The job took almost a day, giving a return of about ?2 per hour. The same week one of the tools of my trade (my typewriter) broke down; the labour charge for repair was ?3 per hour. It was a bad week, for the heating system which warms my study along with the rest of my home gave out; the labour charge to put it right was ?4 per hour.

The moral of this sad tale is that those of us who (almost literally) give profes sional advice to publishers seem to be regarded as cheap labour. One publisher recently indicated ?7 per hour as their figure for the costing of in-house editorial

work. Until the AUT provides us with some more positive guidance on a reasonable figure for the evaluation of

manuscripts, perhaps the ?50 per day and ?8 per hour suggested by the AUT

207

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208 Observations

Conditions of Service Committee for consultancy could be regarded as a proper rate for the job in editorial work. In these inflationary times there seems a good case for some professional solidarity in establishing and maintaining a reason

able rate of remuneration for a valuable professional service, which may be the only opportunity for outside earnings for many hard-pressed academics.

Queen Mary College (University of London)

Acknowledging the past: Richard Cantillon's pattern of urban settlement location Kenneth J. Fairbairn, University of Alberta and Brenton M. Barr, University of Calgary

Summary. Textbook accounts of urban settlement location emphasize the work of 20th-century theorists, and the possibility of intellectual continuity is often ignored. A review of Richard Cantillon's 1755 essay serves as a reminder of the need to acknowledge the past.

Locational problems are the central theme of many geographical textbooks. These texts commonly present one particular concept, model, or theory in relation to the locational problems under discussion but frequently exclude consideration of alternative schemes. In textbook discussions on the location of urban settlements, for example, the theoretical scheme of Walter Christaller is usually discussed at length while the system of August Losch receives at least

nominal evaluation. The work of their natural predecessors, however, usually receives either cursory mention or is ignored.

Discussion of earlier works in introductory texts provides an intellectual perspective on development of methodology in any discipline since the relative contribution of numerous scholars may be seen to overlap, converge, diverge, and above all, perhaps even evolve. Assessment of previous contributions to

urban location theory, for example, clearly shows that a theoretical interest in

the origin and location of towns is by no means a recent phenomenon even

though earlier attempts do not match the rigour of Christaller and Losch.

Richard Cantillon Richard Cantillon, for example, made observations on the origin, location, growth, and size of urban settlements in the early 18th century. His Essay On The Nature of Trade In General, written in French between 1730 and

1734, was published in 1755. Cantillon's thoughts presented here are drawn from Henry Higgs' translation of the Essay in 1931 for the Royal Economic

Society which was reissued in 1959.1 The Essay is divided into three parts, each of which contains a number of chapters. The first part is largely concerned

with people in an economic system and contains the major discourse on urban

settlement.

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