Colored Illustrations of Mollusks in Taiwan
by Lai Jingyang
ISBN 9789867001931, 2005 published by the National Taiwan Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, printed paper softcover in a clear protective plastic wrap, 384 pages , about 13.5 by 21 cm (about 5¼ by 8¼ inches), color photo illustrations of almost 600 species with descriptive information.
Until now we have only seen one copy of this book. We are delighted to have found eight copies that we now can offer to our clients. The book is a well-illustrated guide to 586 species of mollusks found in the waters and on the land in Taiwan. As you would expect the greatest number of the shells are the marine gastropods and bivalves, but there it also includes a small representation of land shells, freshwater shells, and shells in the other classes. The book is intended for use by Taiwanese and Chinese collectors, and it is written in standard simplified Chinese. While the names of the shells are in English, but it is their common names that are used along with the illustrations. Although the book has indexed by both the common names and the scientific names it is unwieldy to use. It is a good book in spite of this handicap for non-Chinese readers, which gives us a look at many of the shells found in Taiwan where there is an overlap of the molluscan fauna found in the South China Sea and extending to the north into the East China Sea.