Die Schweiz auf alten Karten, by Leo Weisz. 227 pages, with 244 reproductions of maps (some in color), views and instruments, in addition to many unnumbered portraits. Zürich: Verlag der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung, 1945.

No student of Alpine maps can afford to neglect this book, which is one of the most interesting of the Swiss publications available since the end of the war, being comparable in content to Chubb’s volume on the atlases of Great Britain. It deals first with maps of Switzerland from ancient times, through the Middle Ages, down to the first printed maps of Waldseemüller and the Strasbourg Ptolemy. This is followed by thorough studies of the maps of Münster, Tschudi and Stumpf, the forefathers of modern Swiss cartography. A further section deals with 16th- and 17th-century map makers, such as Schöpf, Mercator, Hondius, Jansson and Blaeu, who continued to advance the art. A final chapter is devoted to the 18th-century workers—Scheuchzer, Jaillot, Delisle, Walser, Pfyffer, Exchaquet, Weiss and Müller—to all of whom mountaineers are indebted for detailed knowledge of their playground.

J. M. Thorington