Conchologica Iconica
or Illustrations of the shells of molluscous animals
Volume 10, Reeve 1856.
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Conchologica Iconica or Illustrations of the shells of molluscous animals |
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Lovell Reeve was born in 1814 in Great Brittain (at Ludgate Hill). At the age
of thirteen he started as a grocers apprentice, at which he also obtained a
collection shells from Cyprus. This aroused his fascination for natural history
and for shells and conchology in particular. Later on, due to his increasing
knowledge in the area of conchology, he was given a Fellowship in the Linnaean
Society.
In 1840 he bought a large shell collection in Rotterdam and he specialized in
selling natural history specimen. Three years thereafter (1843), he started
with his largest and most famous publication: Conchologica Iconica, on which
he worked the rest of his life. Not all 20 volumes were finished when he died
in 1865 and the last volume was published 13 years later. Most of the materials
he used for Conchologica Iconica were part of the collection of Hugh Cuming
(1791 – 1865). The illustrations were made by Georges
Brettingham Sowerby.
In volume 10 of Conchologica Iconica, the Ampullariidae shells from the Cuming
collection were described and illustrated. Because of the historic value regarding
this publications in relation to apple snails, the chapter of the Ampullaria
has been digitized and made available here on this website.
| Conchologia Iconica, or Illustrations
of the shells of molluscous animals (20 volumes). 1843-1878. London. Reeve, Lovell Augustus (1814-1865), illustrations by Sowerby Georges Brettingham (Junior) (1812 – 1884). |
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| Volume 10: "Ampullaria - Cancellaria - Littorina - Soletellina - Capsa - Capsella - Sanguinolaria - Psammobia - Psammotella - Mytilus - Modiola - Lithodomus - Avicula". | ||
| Chapter: "Ampullaria", 1856. Adobe Acrobat file (732kb) | ||
This electronic version of Conchologia iconica, L.A. Reeve is reconstructed from microslides obtained from the Teylersmuseum in Haarlem, The Netherlands (http://www.teylersmuseum.nl). The pictures are of poor quality and due to technical limitations, the resolution is rather low as well. Unfortunately, the text wasn’t much better, but luckely it was readable enough to reconstruct the whole chapter of the Ampullaria.
The following people assisted in making the text available in electronic format:
Editing and reconstruction: Stijn A.I. Ghesquiere
The original lay-out of the book has been preserved as much as possible.
No copyrights are claimed on this electronic version of Reeve’s book.
Hopefully more and more old books become available in an electronic version.
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