Book reviews: Atlas of Switzerland

Summary

W. Witt reviews installments 2–4 of the Atlas of Switzerland, edited by E. Imhof and issued in 1966–1968 with 52 plates; half of the atlas’s map sheets had appeared by the end of 1968. The review highlights maps of soils, hydrology, hydrogeology, vegetation, prehistoric settlement, human-induced landscape change, population and religion, commuting, languages and dialects, urban development, and tourism. Witt praises their content, cartographic methods, and production quality, particularly the graphic simplification of population maps and the tourism plate’s attempts at new classifications. He also observes that thematic cartography still lacks adequate means to represent the complexity of linguistic phenomena.