Copper engraving, 300 x 385 mm, hand-painted. An excellent example. This is the edition edited by J. N. Bellin (1703–1772) of Niels Horrebow's map of Iceland, based on the first trigonometric survey of the country. The survey was begun by Magnús Arason in 1728. His death in 1730 meant that the work was inherited by the Norwegian officer Knoff, who completed the survey in 1734, correcting Arason's original; however, it was not published until 1752, when Niels Horrebow published his Natural History of Iceland, accompanied by a map based on Knoff's, for which Horrebow obtained the king's permission. The map was significantly reduced and introduced errors. But despite its flaws, the map represents a vast improvement over Ortelius's 16th-century publication of Bishop Guðbrand Þorláksson's map. Horrebow's book was published in a German edition in 1753, in English in 1758, and in French in 1764. The work appeared in excerpt form in Prévost's Histoire Générale des Voyages, for which Bellin produced an edition of the map that was added to Prévost's in 1768. Two versions of the map are known, the second of which includes a pagination note at the bottom right for the map's inclusion in volume 17 of the octavo edition of the Histoire. The present copy conforms to this second version, which appears to have appeared in 1780.