Observations sur la Construction de la Carte de l'Ocean Meridional, pour servir vaisseaux du roy, dressée au dépost des cartes, plans & journaux de la marine, par ordre de M. le comte de Maurepas, 1739

[Paris]: Jacques Guerin, 1739. Quarto. (9 5/8 x 7 13/16 inches). 18pp. Contemporary paper-backed boards.

The very rare first edition of Bellin's extensive account of the "Ocean Meridional."

The work includes lengthy separate analyses of the coasts of Africa and of South America as recorded on the map. In addition to geographic locations, observations made in the regions by various explorers are cited. The cartographer Bellin was employed for more than five decades in the French Hydrographic Service, where he served as the first "Ingénieur hydrographe de la Marine." Commissioned to develop new surveys of the coasts of France and then the known coasts of the world, these were published, respectively, as Le Neptune Français in 1735 and the Hydrographie Français between 1756 and 1765. Bellin also published a Petit Atlas Maritime with 580 charts and plans of harbors, issued in five volumes in 1764. The present work was later published as one of thirty reprinted pamphlets in the author's Recueil des Memoires qui ont été publiés avec les Cartes Hydrographiques (Paris ca. 1767). This work is extremely rare: European Americana locates copies (with a variant imprint) only at LC and JCB.

European Americana 739/24 (different publisher); Sabin 4556 (note).