Foreword 



Shell collecting is now taking its place as one of the major outdoor 

 diversions. It has advantages over such pursuits as bird watching or fishing, 

 for you may have even more pleasure in studying your catch at home than 

 in the time spent afield. The thrill of finding a shell new to you, or of watch- 

 ing some rare snail going about its watery aff^airs, is ample reward for the 

 sunburn and stifi" neck you may have from wading around too long with a 

 water-glass. Hours sieving dredgings are counted well spent if a fine volute 

 or turrid turns up in the seaweed and rubbish. 



American Seashells gives a comprehensive and well-rounded view of the 

 Mollusca in nontechnical language. It is easy reading for the beginner, but it 

 contains also material indispensable to the advanced malacologist. The chap- 

 ters on nudibranchs and pteropods are especially welcome, for these beautiful 

 animals have always been slighted in American books. In chapters on the 

 life of the snail and the clam, with the author we "listen in" to the current 

 of molluscan life. The shells become living things, moving and breathing, 

 feeding and mating. 



One perplexity of the novice is that different books may give different 

 names for the same shell. The causes of this diversity are explained on a 

 later page. With the facilities of the largest museum in America, the author 

 has been able to speak with authority in those matters of nomenclature. 

 When the problem is zoological and still to be solved by further collections, 

 or by the study of living moUusks, then the cooperation of the keen collector 

 may give the answer sought. Professional malacologists are few. Their work 

 is largely in museums with dead animals. The interesting but long task of 

 collecting from a thousand miles of coast, and observing mollusks alive, has 

 always been in large part a labor of love by private naturalists. Our science 

 owes nearly as much to them as to the work of professional zoologists. 



The author belongs to the younger group of malacologists, but he has 

 cultivated the society of mollusks in many lands, from East Africa, the 



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