This book has 790 illustrations in full color.

Shells occupy a unique place in the natural world. No other animals are as widely collected, traded or bought and sold because of their beauty, attractiveness and rarity. Each year an increasing number of people want to identify, classify and understand the beautiful shells they see or collect. This guide is necessarily a brief sampling of the many thousands of marine shells. Because is is a guide for collecting we have emphasized attractive and better-known species, occasionally slighting some common species and familiar genera. We hope that the pastime of shell collecting will lead to increasing interest in the fascinating animals which make the shells.

The author, editor and artists wish to express their appreciation to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phildadelphia for the use of its extensive research collections in the preparation of this book. We also owe a debt to the artists, George and Marita Sandström, for their excellent work on the illustrations.

R.T.A and H.S.Z, Forward