[Geotools-gt2-users] Wrong magic number

[<glo...@gm...>]

Hi!
First of all I want to thank you for helping me to resolve my question about
filters.
Now I have a new problem. I want to read the contents of the records of a
shapefile and after trying a lot of options  I've used the next code:

FileChannel in = new FileInputStream("UK_sar_1991_area.dbf").getChannel();
            ShapefileReader r = new ShapefileReader(in) ;
            int numRec = 0;
            while (r.hasNext())
            {
                ShapefileReader.Record rec = r.nextRecord();
                numRec++;
                System.out.println("Record number " + numRec + ": " +
rec.toString());
            }
            r.close();

but I get: java.io.IOException: Wrong magic number, expected 9994, got
50791170

Does anybody know what is my problem?Maybe it will be another new user
error, but I don't find a solution.

THANK YOU!!
(and excuse my english...)

Gloria