Mundus Physico-Mathematicis Quaestionibus Elucidatus..

Rare: with little-known and unusual cartographic depictions of New Holland. This is an unusually lavish presentation of a thesis, presented at Salzburg University by the exotically titled Count Schlick. Two of his complex and interesting maps encompass the discoveries of the previous century both of Australia and the Pacific in general, while a third plate has three different projections of the world map. A copy of the book handled by us a few years ago had a frontispiece which is not present here.

The maps are curious but finely executed, set within detailed and highly stylised plates. "Nova Hollandia", in particular, has a distinctive and rather unusual shape, which might be thought to borrow from the classic designs of the late-seventeenth century. They are unusual for a work of this date because they evidently have not taken into account, for example, the Thevenot map. At the same time, a case could be made for relating the map more closely with the more imaginative depictions of the great southern continent in the sixteenth century, with their depictions of "Beach" and "Terra Australis Incognita". There is a curiously outdated depiction here of California as an island (although not confirmed as a peninsula until the mid-eighteenth century, the theory was gaining wider acceptance at the time Schlick's book was published).

This is a surprisingly scarce book; we have traced just four German and two other library holdings, and only the State Library of New South Wales copy in Australia. None of Schlick's maps is recorded by Tooley.