Excerpt from An Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue of Recent Bivalve Shells Tm: aim of the present book was to describe and notice a large number of shells in a limited number of pages. It was designed, originally, as an abridged translation of the excellent edition of Lamarck's 'animaux sans Vertebres' by Deshayes, enlarged by the addition of such species as appeared to the writer to be most decidedly distinct from any enumerated in those volumes. This selection proved embarrassing; since many of the Lamarckian diagnoses, being far too brief for the purpose of definition, suited fairly enough, from their very succinctness, the characters of several subsequently named shells, Which otherwise the author would have gladly introduced. Up to the genus Nucula the plan of the work has been uniform, the species of the 'animaux' following each other in numerical suc cession beyond that point, the author has allowed himself a less fettered exercise of his more matured judgment; nevertheless, no Lamarckian species has been wilfully omitted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.