Reviews: A descriptive atlas of New Zealand

Summary

Stanisław Leszczycki reviews A Descriptive Atlas of New Zealand, published by R. E. Owen, Government Printer, Wellington, in 1960. The 26 × 31 cm atlas contains 33 colour maps, 25 black-and-white maps in the text, 88 pages of explanatory text, and 24 full-page aerial photographs. He praises its careful graphic presentation and considers its extensive text effectively a monograph on New Zealand. Its 27 short chapters by various specialists cover history, the geographical environment, population, the economy, overseas territories, and Antarctic claims. Charts, statistical tables, and supplementary maps explain change over time, complementing the static thematic maps. Leszczycki describes the atlas’s arrangement and cartographic methods as traditional, including shaded coloured elevation layers on the overview map and unshaded hypsometric mapping on the principal maps. He draws attention to climate maps, pre-European vegetation, land classification and use, and city plans. His overall assessment is favourable: the atlas is a good, relatively recent geographical reference, although it offers almost no methodological innovation and shows little visible influence from modern world cartography.