A List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress, with Bibliographical Notes

Abstract

THE first two volumes of this valuable work were reviewed in NATURE in 1910 (vol. lxxxiv., p. 325), and as the same general plan and arrangement are followed in vol. iii., a brief notice of this will suffice. It deals almost entirely with acquisitions by the Library of Congress since 1909, but such are the resources at the disposal of this fortunate institution that the present list reaches more than half the bulk of the earlier one. In part this may be due to the somewhat fuller notes and analyses —a feature of great value—but the additions to the collection are extraordinarily numerous and important. They include, e.g., copies of Lafreri's rare Italian atlas, and of Waghenaer's “ Speculum Nauticum,” the absence of both of which was commented on in our previous notice. But few copies of Lafreri, with title, are known, and no two are quite alike; so that the careful collation now given, and the comparison with Nordenskiöld's list, will be a boon to students, especially in conjunction with the comparative table of maps in other known copies—one in the collection of the Royal Geographical Society—lately supplied by Dr. Wieder, of Amsterdam. Other additions are the rare first edition of Ortelius, and six further editions of Mercator. The most complete of the latter (1639), of which a copy was lately acquired by the Royal Geographical Society, is not, however, to be found, any more than in our own national collection. We still miss a much-needed guide to the arrangement in the form of page-headings.

A List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress, with Bibliographical Notes.

Compiled under the direction of Philip Lee Phillips. Vol. iii. Titles 3266–4087. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1914.)