A highly decorative separate-issue world map

A beautiful large-format double-hemisphere world map, dedicated to Bertrand René Pallu, Louis XV's commissioner of Lyon. On the map, Tasmania is connected to New Guinea by a straight, unbroken coastline, twenty years before Cook mapped New South Wales; in the North Atlantic, Frobisher's Strait crosses Greenland and the mythical island of Buss is marked, here associated with the older myth of Friesland; and California is shown as a peninsula, with no mapping of the American coastline further north. Engraved by Delamonce, the borders are packed with decorative detail: above the map are allegorical figures of the Roman gods and Muses; underneath the map are allegorical figures of the continents; down each side are astronomical diagrams; and in the cusps are celestial spheres. This in an early state: c.1770 the map was re-engraved, with Australia bulging out to the east and the fictitious 'Mer de L'Ouest' added above California.