Page:The common shells of the sea-shore (IA commonshellsofse00wood 0).pdf/10

iv the twelve Plates, and compare with them the printed description, he will see at a glance the scientific name of the shell, together with the locality in which it is found.

Knowing that many persons have been discouraged at the very outset, by reason of the crabbed and often barbarous names by which the various species are known in the scientific world, I have given their popular titles whenever they exist, and when that is not the case I have supplied them, as has been done by entomologists with the multitudinous moths and butterflies of England. Whenever the name has been one easily remembered, and one that already exists, such as Venus, Astarte, Leda, and so forth, I have retained it; but when we come to such names as Scrobicularia, Chemnitzia, Terebratula, Xylophaga, etc., I have substituted for them certain English names which express some characteristic of the shell or its inhabitant, and in many cases have simply translated the Greek and Latin words into our own language.

The reader perhaps may be surprised, on looking over the list of Plates, to see that some of the shells are marked as inhabitants of fresh water, and a few of the land. But, on pern sing the work, he will see that a slight mention of such shells is useful in order to preserve the necessary gradation from one group to another. Indeed, there are many shells that cannot be classed either as inhabitants of the fresh or salt water, because they seem to thrive indifferently in either the one or the other.

Let me strongly recommend the intending shell-hunter to read through the work before he begins his task, and then to set to work systematically. Let him give one day, for example, to the sands, another to the rocks, another to the sea-weeds which grow between high and low water, another to mud, and so forth. Let him always, if possible, procure the living animal with the shell, and keep it for a time in sea-water, so as to watch its habits; always taking care to make notes in ink, and to sketch anything that may strike the eye. Four or five weeks thus spent will impart a vast fund of knowledge; and when the shell-hunter returns home, he may go with profit and pleasure to those elaborate scientific works which would only have repelled him before. To such works this little book will act as a guide; and I cannot do better than recommend the four beautiful volumes of Messrs. Forbes and Hanley, whose arrangement I have followed throughout, and in which will be found a mass of information which is necessarily excluded from so small a work as the present.