The Ray Society has a history back to 1844 of publishing fine works on natural history with a special emphasis on the British Isles. This latest production is by David Reid of the Natural History Museum and is the latest (but I hope not the last) result of his studies in the Littorinidae which began in the early 1980s. It deals with 19 recent and 4 fossil species which he places in 4 subgenera of Littorina - Liralittorina, Planilittorina, Littorina ss, and Neritrema - together with 6 fossil species whose attribution is doubtful.

This beautifully produced book manages to delight the eye whilst efficiently explaining elegant hypotheses for the amazing diversity of striking patterns found on mollusc shells. The explanations are ultimately in terms of reaction-diffusion equations, but no mathematics is needed to follow the arguments. A simple example of the kind of model is of one substance, the activator, that promotes production both of itself and of another substance that inhibits production of the activator.

This book serves as a good introduction to the Marine shells of Djibouti, a small state at the mouth of the Red Sea, between Ethiopia and Somalia and opposite to Aden. As France is the former colonial power it is fitting that this study should have been published in France. The text is in French, but illustrations explaining the specialist terms used in the descriptions help make it easy to follow. The introduction includes details of local habitats and a section on conservation and it is interesting to note that such a small state should have two Marine National Parks.

The Molluscan faunas of tropical South America have been well documented in popular literature, A.M. Keen's Seashells of tropical Western America and E.C. Rios's Seashells of Brazil are key works in any Molluscan library. However there has long been a need for a book covering those species from the colder more southerly part of the continent, this book now fills that need.

Few molluscs have shells exhibiting a greater degree of colour polymorphism than the genus Liguus. Although there are only 5 or 6 species no less than 180 colour forms have been named. This book looks at the single species found in Florida, Liguus fasciatus (Muller, 1774), which occurs there in some 59 named colour forms. Although the species is also found in Cuba, where at least 32 additional named colour forms occur, these are not discussed here.

Here is a very welcome guide (A4 size) to the shells of the non-marine molluscs of Italy. It is valuable as a gap filler because there is nothing else comparable for Italy or any other southern European country. The book consists of a list of species and subspecies, in taxonomic order, followed by colour plates, mostly photographs, in the same order. These are accompanied by a brief note of the habitat in which each taxon is found, a small inset map showing in which part of Italy it.occurs, and an indication of its size range.

For many years the Museum of Natural History in Goteborg has undertaken faunistic studies in the Province of Dalsland in SW Sweden. This region is of special interest not only because of its ecological diversity but because it straddles the border between the Boreal and S. Scandinavian regions, a boundary reflected by the northern limit of oak. Moreover, calcareous rocks occur within the Precambrian Dal series in the central and northern parts of the Province and these contribute to the ecological diversity of the region.

As this fascinating book received excellent reviews when first published in 1993 the aim of this review is to draw attention to its availability as a paperback. Its treatment of shells is based on 3 questions by the molecular biologist, Sidney Brenner, as the author points out - "How does it work? How is it built? How did it evolve?" - so it has 3 parts: "The Rules of Shell Construction: Life in a Dangerous World," "How Shells Work"; and "The Dimension of Time".

The author characterizes the species of the freshwater prosobranch family Ampullariidae on a conchological basis (61 pp + 4 photographic plates) and describes the anatomy of 36 species (104 pp.). He distinguishes ten genera, for which he gives the classic shell characters (i.e. without ultrastructure descriptions).

It is over 20 years since the publication of C. S. Weaver &J. E. du Font's "The Living Volutes". In that time much new information has been discovered about Volutes and some 100 new species proposed, such as the beautiful Lyria doutei and Amoria yosukei. The authors of the present work aimed to provide a summary of current knowledge on Volutes and in this they have largely succeeded.