Original copper engraved map of the Antarctic region showing Van Diemans Land (Tasmania) and the South Island of New Zealand, engraved by Ambrose Tardieu after an original map delineated by Guillieme De’Lisle for the Comte de Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle.
The French edition of Buffon’s famous natural history volumes Histoire Naturelle detailed the collection in Louis XIV’s Cabinet of Curiosities was originally published in France between 1749 and 1804. This later map of Antarctica copies Buffon’s original published map by De’Lisle which illustrated both the North and South Pole side by side. Buffon’s map represented the South and North Pole to the 45th degree and was engraved to illustrate glacial cooling in the Southern Hemisphere in comparison with the boreal Hemisphere. The correspondence in the Southern Hemisphere of the position of Northern Hemisphere cities emphasized the difference in latitude of the icy expanses between the two poles. An interesting anomaly.
Dutch and English Explorer’s are represented including the tracks of Halley’s expedition which he commenced in 1698 to make observations on the conditions of terrestrial magnetism.
