Smithsonian Handbooks: Shells Download Free (EPUB, PDF)
Smithsonian Handbooks are the most visually appealing guides on the natural world in the book marketplace. Featuring more than 500 full-color illustrations and photographs, along with detailed annotations, Smithsonian Handbooks make identification easy and accurate.
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: DK (2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0789489872
ISBN-13: 978-0789489876
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #66,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #8 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Animals > Seashells #83 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Oceans & Seas #333 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Fauna
This handbook on shells is very reliable in the field or in a studio. Dozens of mollusks, crustaceans, and other exotic shell collectibles are listed here, turning out at more than two hundred species listings! However, most featured here are east coast species or found way out of the United States, which makes it not as reliable for an American beachcoming in Santa Barbara or Baja California. For those living out on the east coast or in the Caribbean, this is an excellent and very reliable resource. Also quite fun to read as a coffee table or easy chair book. There is a catch however, as the book is bound in low quality paperback. May show wear more quickly than Audubon leatherback guides or Peterson solid lamination and paper. Best for a landlocked ocean lover wanting to take an extraordinary look at the seas marvels and shell collectibles at a nearby store.
All collectors become well aware of the two most famous shell book authors as they enter a journey into this hobby; R Tucker Abbott and Peter Dance. Dance has written this book as a general shell book of world wide shells, more to promote interest than being a particularly useful field identification guide. There are at last count, somewhere around 80,000 members of the mollusks; clearly any shell book has to take that into account and only the more popular species are going to be present.What Dance has is some representaive members of the more popular species the casual collector is likely to find or purchase. While I like the clean photographs I find the ranges that are listed for the different species are a bit too general. But again, this is a book to get one started in the hobby.While getting very long in the tooth, don't overlook Abbotts Golden Guide of seahells for the beginner. It is a surpringly good intro book as long as you don't take the relative abundance of species listed too seriously (In other words don't put a morgage down on a Glory-of-the-Seas you'll likely be making a poor investment!).A much better general shell book once you've found you really can't id all your worldwide shells is the Abbott/Dance Compendium of Seashells. It helps ID well over 4,000 species. Otherwise use regional guides of which there are numerous examples such as Seashells of North America: A Guide to Field Identification (Abbott).
This is a wonderful book and very informative. It has a photo on each page of each shell along with each description of the name, what countries they come from, where in the water or in sand you find them or how deep in the sea they come from, the size they grow and how commonly found are they. I think this book is for anyone really. Weather you're beginning a collection, or collecting for a while. Serious about collecting(like me) or just like to look at interresting and beautiful shells.Rehana(Chicago, IL)
After reading JUNONIA by Kevin Henkes, my 11 year old daughter wanted a shell book. She loves this book as it goes right to the point of shells and types and names and what lives in them. The pictures are perfect, detailed and its very informational without overkill. A must have for all parents with kids interested in nature.
Great resource for this curious about sea creatures on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Great photos which are very helpful in identifying shells! DK always does a pretty good job with their reference books, but this one is even better in terms of the depth of knowledge it gets into. Not a 'kids' book but GREAT for children, and adults. Good gift.
I bought this book used thru . I was looking for a easy to identify my seashells that my hermit crabs are wearing. I like it because it has actual pictures of the shells with nice descriptions.
Although this book has many beautiful pictures and drawings, it is extremely limited in the numbers of shells it discusses or portrays. I was looking for an authoritative guide and key, but it is instead a miniature coffee-table book. Arrived on time and in pristine condition.
Got this when we came back from vacation with a pile of shells we collected. Full of great info and pictures, we were able to easily identify what we had and learned quite a bit from the book intro in the process.
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