| New Zealand Seashells - Visual Guide by J. Raven & S. Bracegirdle
2010, Creatus Design, Wellington, New Zealand, paper covers in laminated plastic cover, about 8¼ by 11¾ inches (A4 size- about 21 by 30cm) 76 pages include 56 page size color photo plates and 3 pages of color photos of New Zealand beaches, brief introduction contains map of New Zealand and a diagram of shell features.
I was not aware of this book until it was called to my attention by a good friend and it has been a long and frustrating chase to try to get copies of this book for our inventory. Inquiries to some friends working in Malacology in New Zealand Museums turned up an email address which went unanswered. Attempts to track down a publisher were equally dead ends. I was therefore very grateful when I saw my friends at ConchBooks somehow managed to snag a few copies and were able to spare a few copies for us. First off, it is nice to have some good photographs in color of the marine shells found off New Zealand. The photos are a bit small with a layout familiar to us from Abbott & Dance's "Compendium of Seashells" and more recently from Markus Huber's "Compendium of Bivalves". But the photos are nice and clear in spite of their size and the authors have managed to get more than 800 species depicted in only 56 plates . This book is bound to become an instant collectible as well as a reference book since only 250 copies were made. You'll not want to toss out your "New Zealand Mollusca" by Powell (should you be lucky enough to own one)and replace it with this book but this book certainly deserves a place in your library. The molluscan fauna of New Zealand is very complex and is a mix of warm water and cold water shells and although we are given only a bare minimum amount of information about these shells it is nice to have this photographic iconography as a reference source.
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