>Speaking of "before computers", I personally would love to read some of
>the earlier writings from the turn of the century shellers who were
>discovering and documenting new species, any ideas on where to look??
>Thanks, Michael Huggins of Michael & Marcie Huggins, Bay Harbor Islands
>FL
>
 
Hi Michael,
 
One of the classics of the "Sheller's Library" is R. Tucker Abbott's 1976
_The Best of the Nautilus, A Bicentennial Account of American Conchology_.
 
From the blurb on the jacket:
"Here is a treasury of nostalgic and often humorous writings taken from the
first 40 years of America's oldest Mollusk journal [The Nautilus], covering
the late pioneering period of 1886 to 1927. The noted malacologist and
editor, R. Tucker Abbott, has carefully gathered a wide-ranging series of
ober 100 articles that depict the lore and excitement of shell hunting in
the United States. Revealing commentaries by Dr. Abbott put the articles in
today's perspective. He goives interesting biographical notes on several
dozen leading malacologists of the 19th Century.
 
Join Charles Hedley on his first helmet dive on a coral reef in Australia
in 1894; come with Frank C. Baker with a boatload of students down the
Mississippi in 1902 to find freshwater pearly mussels; read about
landsnails that stopped a train, and river snails that clogged the water
mains in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1895.Laugh at Abe Loche, a policeman of
Atlantic Coity who was felled by a clam dropped on his head by a seagull in
1925. You'll smell woodsmoke and breakfast bacon when you read James
Ferriss; account of landshell collecting in the Great Smoky Mountains of
Tennessee"
 
And so on. Does this sound like what you want to read?  I recommend it
highly. Don't know where you can get a copy. It was published by American
Malacologists, the publishing company that Tucker founded. Perhaps they
have some copies left?  Or try Dick Petit or the Janowskys, two American
shell book dealers who might have a copy. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me
if Amazon.com lists it!
 
Lynn Scheu