The “Appendix” and the first two parts of the “Toonneel,” published by Willem Blaeu and his son John, may be regarded as the beginning of the large Blaeu Atlas first issued in 1662 in eleven volumes, a work of unsurpassed excellence; indeed, we may refer to it as the foremost atlas produced by the great Dutch atlas makers of the seventeenth century. Its completion and issue, after the death of the father, Willem, places it therefore without the scope of this sketch, yet as he had contributed so much to insure its success by his own early activities, a word of reference to it is here fitting. Editions of this work appeared in rapid succession in the Dutch, the French, the Latin and the Spanish language, the number of volumes being either nine, ten, eleven or twelve in each edition, varying otherwise but little in the essential features. As numerous copies of the work were printed in each edition, it is therefore not a publication which can be called rare even in this day. Most of these editions were printed from the superior type and copper plates of the Blaeu printing house, and on paper of fine quality; some were issued in costly bindings, having their maps, coat of arms and emblems of states and of royalty exquisitely colored. Copies of the atlas were especially prepared for rulers and for statesmen of renown. We are informed that to Admiral de Ruyter an especially fine copy was presented after the two days’ battle of 1666, and that in the name of the States General a copy bound in royal purple was presented to the Sultan Mohammed IV, with which he was so well pleased that he ordered its translation into the Turkish language. * * * * * In Blaeu’s day globes were held to be of the highest value as aids in the study of geography and astronomy.[28] Seamen engaged in transoceanic navigation counted on a terrestrial and a celestial globe as essential to a navigator’s complete outfit of instruments, and as Blaeu was especially desirous of making his scientific knowledge serve the cause of navigation, it was but natural that he should turn his attention to globe making. Among those skilled in the art of globe construction in the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century, the Low Countries could claim such distinguished men as Gerhardus Mercator, Jacobus [Florentius] van Langren and Arnoldus [Florentius] van Langren, father and son, Jodocus Hondius and Guilielmus Jans. Blaeu, and none of these was more skilful than the last named. Both for the number constructed and for the quality of the work, his globes are cartographical and astronomical treasures of the first value. [Illustration: Terrestrial Globe and Celestial Globe, 1616. Willem Janszoon Blaeu]