| A Review of the Volutidae
Synonymy, nomenclature, range and illustrations,
by Maxwell Smith
reprint (undated) of original 1942 edition, Borden Publishing, California, cloth with heavy paper dust jacket, 127 pages, 8½ by 11 inches (21 by28 cm), 26 plates black and white drawings and photographs
For many years this book and the seveal other books written by Smith were the standard books for shell collectors and two of the most popular books that he did were this one and the "Rock Shell Catalog" (the Muricinae). We are lucky that this book on the Volutes was reprinted making it an easily affordable reference book for serious Volute collectors. There have been a lot of taxonomic changes to the classification of these shells at the specific and super-specific level since its' publication but it is an interesting book to use to look backward to see where we have come to today. This book was the first major revision of the Volutidae in 60 years when it was written. These are new books but because it appears that the covers did not dry quickly enough when they were printed the dust jackets have a "dirty" appearance. |
