three maps. Petermann published this supplement issue to encourage people and institutes to support German efforts to explore the central Arctic. The first map, scale 1:40,000,000 covers both the Arctic and Antarctica, with the routes of the explorers from Cook to 1861. He measures the unexplored area in the Arctic as 140,000 German square miles (approximately 7,700,000 km²), comparing it to Australia's total of 138,000. The unexplored Antarctic he calculates as 396,000 German square miles (approximately 21,800,000 km²). Petermann uses the map specifically to show the benefits of using ships for exploration, rather than the sledges usually used by the Americans and the British. He must have been convinced that the central Arctic contained vast expanses of open water and land, the latter presumably extensions of Greenland and Spitsbergen. Though the routes in the Antarctic map have been engraved, they are not highlighted in color. Instead Petermann has colored the polygons that encompass the areas covered by the several explorers. This highlights the unexplored area clearly, even though it is blank. But Petermann is definitely more interested in having the Germans explore the Arctic than the Antarctic, presumably because the costs of an Arctic expedition can be met more easily than those of an Antarctic one. The more detailed map of Spitsbergen not only shows the Swedish surveys of 1861 to 1864, but also the presence of coal fields, coastal areas with driftwood, and areas where reindeer can normally be found. Petermann's last map is in the modified polar projection first proposed by G. Jäger of Vienna. Jäger had developed this projection specifically to facilitate the palaeontological analysis of the inventory of animal life in the Arctic area. Petermann thought this the best projection for planning the laying of telegraph lines. North-East passage He not only promoted explorations, but also actively collected funds to realize them, and gave an account of the receipts and expenditures in several issues of PGM. In 1865, Otto Volger of the FDH (Freies Deutsches Hochstift für Wissenschaft, Künste und allgemeine Bildung, founded in 1859) organised the 'Allgemeine Deutsche Versammlung von Freunden der Erdkunde' (General German Assembly of Friends of Geography). During this two-day meeting Georg von Neumayer stressed the fact that Germany needed a German maritime institute to be independent of other nations. One of the programmed issues to be discussed was the issue of guidelines for the use of a homogeneous meteorological logbook for