Ever since the monumental work of Pilsbry and Bequaert (1927) with its quite remarkable coverage of published names of African freshwater molluscs, still an unsurpassed tool, this group has been rather well-served with literature, at least by comparison with the land molluscs. Mandahl-Barth's book on the Uganda fauna and many revisionary papers, further revisions and popular leaflets from the Danish Bilharziasis Laboratory and particularly David Brown's recent manual have made identification of freshwater molluscs possible.

The first volume of Biology of Opisthobranch Molluscs (Thompson 1976) begins with chapters on Classification and Affinities, Locomotion, Food and Feeding, Defence, Reproductive Organs, Development, Larval Biology and Life Cycles. The second half of Volume 1 deals with British Opisthobranch species of the orders Bullomorpha, Aplysiomorpha, Pleurobranchomorpha, Acochlidiacea, and Sacoglossa (=Ascoglossa).

This sumptuous volume could have been much more than just an introduction to tropical land shells, which is all that it amounts to. The introduction to terrestrial molluscs covers their origin, classification and biology. It is followed by useful regional accounts, helpfully divided into regions. These review the major mollusc groups present and list references to that region. These reference lists are necessarily very incomplete. The authors arc to be congratulated on the excellent photographs of living animals which accompany the regional accounts.

As Marine Recorder I am always interested to hear that major marine benthic surveys are carried out by commercial companies or other organisations as these are a potentially valuable source ofbiogeographical data for the Society's Census schemes. However I am also frequently frustrated by the fact that the results are never published or that release of data is 'difficult' for commercial reasons. It is, therefore, a delight to see the results of a comprehensive survey published in full.

This book is another in the line of high quality colour photographic guides on molluscs currently being published in Italy. One could only wish that such works were being funded for the British fauna; marine bivalves or freshwater gastropods for example.

In these times of increasing providence when it comes to resourceful strategies to provide one's own food, the publication of Edible 

Cornwall has been in the forefront of biological recording in the UK with the develop- ment of computerised databases long before the establishment of biological records centres in other counties. This non-marine mollusc atlas represents the first in a new series of publications and comprises a synthesis of all mollusc records to the end of 1999. This well-presented, softback A4 book has a glossy green cover with a photograph of a living Ashfordia granulata, six pages of introductory text, and a page each for the 122 species recorded from Cornwall.

This is another thorough study by Phillip Maxwell of a New Zealand Tertiary fauna. It is based on his Ph.D. dissertation and it is a loss to New Zealand palaeontology that Phillip was made redundant before this work was published. The scope of the monograph is the 250 species of Mollusca from the Middle to Late Eocene Waihao Greensand and Ashley Mudstone exposed in the Waihao River, on South Island. Nine new genus group taxa are proposed for gastropods and 89 new species of Mollusca are very adequately described.

This formatted catalogue by Dr. Brian Smith is a major summation (and the first since Iredales's 1930s lists) of the state of knowledge of Australia's non-marine mollusc fauna. It is essentially a print out of a concise computer data base which gives the current (to 31 December 1990) state of taxonomic and biological knowledge of the Australian fauna - in this case Bivalvia, Gastropoda: Prosobranchia and Gastropoda: Pulmonata including the introductions.

South's stated objective: 'to present a review of current knowledge of the biology and ecology of slugs, together with their status and control as pests' is achieved by a thorough and scholarly work of a high standard. A summary of slug groups, with particular reference to the British fauna, is followed by detailed reviews of anatomy, physiology, reproduction, behaviour, life cycles and ecology. Additional topics surveyed include predation, parasites and disease, slugs as pests and their control. Appendices cover methods of culture, the anaesthetising, narcotising and preserving of slugs.