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PREFACE BY THE EDITORS. 
The greatest difficulty under which the student of American 
Conchology labors, is the impossibility of obtaining access to the 
earlier writings on the- subject. To remove this difficulty, a series 
of Reprints was commenced several years since, by the publication 
ofthe Complete Writings of Thomas Say. The present volume offers in 
an equally accessible form, all the known writings of ConsTANTINE 
SMALTZ RAFINESQUE. It is believed to contain a re-print of all his 
contributions to Recent and Fossil Conchology, and fac-similes of all 
his published figures. It is the result of the research of several 
years, and contains extracts from works whose titles are not given 
in any of the Bibliographies, not even the exhaustive one recently 
published by Carus and Engellman. It must, however, be antici- 
pated, that among the numerous publications of so prolific an 
author, some additional descriptions of Mollusca may yet come to 
light. : 
All the works quoted, have been placed directly into the hand of 
the compositor, with directions to follow strictly the orthography 
of the original, a fact which must account for the greater part of 
the typographical errors which will be found in the work. 
