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Van Nostrand Reinhold Company (1974). Second Edition. Index. 663pp. 8.7 x 11.3 inches. Hardcover. ISBN 0-442-20228-8. Over 4,000 illustrations.
.Updated and almost doubled in size, here is the second edition of the “bible of shell manuals.” For the first time all 6,500 known species of marine mollusks living in the waters adjacent to North America are listed, and over 3,000 kinds are illustrated and described in detail. Over 14,000 items are indexed. There are more than 4,000 black and white illustrations and twenty-four magnificent color plates.
Dedicated amateur collectors will now find names for the rarest shells — as well as all the common ones. From the geographical distributions and bathymetric ranges given for each species, collectors may now predict what kind of shells they are likely to find from Quebec to Texas or from Alaska to the Gulf of California.
The professional malacologist and serious amateur shell collector will appreciate the monographic reviews, the identification keys, and the updated nomenclature. The second edition is considerably upgraded in technical treatment, and is now an even more useful research tool in shellfishery studies, anti-pollution investigations and marshland conservation projects. Besides its value to the research worker in marine mollusks, it will serve as source material for the marine geologist, the ecologist, the oceanographer, the zoologist, the taxonomist, scientists, and the amateur shell collector.
This is an essential addition to natural history museum libraries, public libraries, and marine station reference rooms. Furthermore, every college and university offering courses in marine biology, marine ecology, paleontology, or wetlands conservation will find the second edition of American Seashells an unparalleled source of information.
R. Tucker Abbott occupies the du Pont Chair of Malacology and serves as Assistant Director of the Delaware Museum of Natural History in Greenville, Delaware. A graduate of Harvard and George Washington Universities, he is a teacher, editor, historian, author, malacologist, curator, and the recipient of many honors and awards. He is the founder of several shell clubs and former president of the American Malacological Union, a member of dozens of malacological societies, and is a trustee of the famous Bermuda Biological Station for Research.
Among his numerous popular books are Kingdom of the Seashell, Sea Shells of the World, and Seashells of North America. He is currently editor-in-chief of The Nautilus, one of the oldest and most influential scientific periodicals concerned with malacology.
Dr. Abbott has traveled the world over in search of the elusive mollusk. His numerous field trips and expeditions have taken him to China, Polynesia, Cuba, East Africa, the Philippines, the Bay of Bengal, and other out-of-the-way collecting grounds.
Listed in American Men of Science, Who's Who in the East, and American Authors Today, he received, among other awards, the Certificate of Award (Smithsonian Institute, 1953), and the Award of Excellence for Books from the Community Arts Magazine (1967). Rachel Carson, Euell Gibbons, and other writers and conservationists have recognized Dr. Abbott's preeminence in the field of malacology. Florida Conservation News observed, “R. Tucker Abbott is to seashell collectors what John J. Audubon was to bird-watchers, and his books on seashell identification form the backbone of most shell collectors' libraries.”
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