Note 3 — THE LEARDO MAP OF THE WORLD 1452 OR 1453

The map was discovered in 1879 by Major Friedrich von Pilat, Imperial Counsellor of the Austro-Hungarian Legation and Consul-General of Austria-Hungary in Venice. At the time it was presented to the Society a brief anonymous description appeared in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Vol. 38, 1906, pp. 365-368. This was based upon a sixteen-page pamphlet by Dr. Guglielmo Berchet, Il planisfero di Giovanni Leardo dell’ anno 1452, Venice, 1880, accompanying a photographic facsimile constituting No. XIV of the series Raccolta di mappamondi e carte nautiche del XIII al XVI secolo published by Ferdinand Ongania, Venice. Dr. Berchet’s paper, while useful to the present writer, has on the whole proved disappointing because of its many inaccuracies in transcriptions and also because almost no attempt was made to deal with the place names, in many respects the most interesting features of all.