Customer Reviews

Eyewitness Explorers: Shells

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I have been collecting shells for around 20 years and never bothered to get a book about them until now. My 4 year old daughter started collecting and I wanted to make sure I had all the answers to her questions about shells. This is definatly the book to have. She is facinated by the great pictures and the cut-aways of the shells. This is a must have for your shelf.

This has to be one of the most useful books I have bought. The photography is very clear. The colors are also good. Best of all I can see all of this without my bifocals.

However, I was a little annoyed at the scarcity of the other regions in the book,mostly because I was interested in finding out about the shells within the area in which I visit to go shelling. However, I thought it was a wonderful first-field-guide with excellent color pictures, specific descriptions, indication of common\uncommon, and the size of the shells.

I am collecting shells for more than 11 years. At the beginning of this activety I found a lot difficulties in species identification, in determianation of their position in the molluscan systematics. The book of S.Peter Dance was the first guide I had obtained. This book introduced me to the world of "professional" shell-collecting. It showed me the way of collection arrangement, specimen cleaning and labling. I learned a lot of new data on ecology, geographic distribution and systematic of molluscs. Really, it is best book for beginner shell-collector I've ever seen and I greatly suggest it to all beginners and even advanced collectors. The wonderfull photoes of the book makes identification easy, the system of legends and signs (accepted in all other Eyewitness Handbooks) provides brief but very convinient information on geography, ecology, sizes and rarity of the species. Even now (having over 1.500 molluscs species and a lot of identificaton guieds) I oft! en look through this book and gain nesessary information. Unfortunatly, the book deal with marine molluscs only. I am shure, that the books of such quality on land and fresh-water molluscs would be greatly apreciated by collectors.