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.

Those of you who have been involved in faunal census surveys will know the effort required to maintain enthusiasm to complete such schemes. It is, therefore, particularly pleasing to see lan Killeen's study of the land and freshwater molluscs of Suffolk appear in print. Moreover, this book, which represents over ten years work on the molluscan fauna of Suffolk, principally by the author, has been produced to the high standard which it deserves.

This compact 253 page book, which is produced in A5 format, continues from two earlier Red Data Books. The first of these, now in the second edition, dealt with vascular plants and this was followed in 1987 by a volume dealing with British insects.

At last we have an up-to-date taxonomy for the British marine mollusc fauna - and for most of north west Europe too.

Now, after several years of careful searching the reams of molluscan literature, Kay Vaught has presented us with a 'state of the art' compilation of supraspedfic names in the Mollusca. The author has done the best job possible by providing a systematic listing of family and generic names, with the details of classification corroborated by the top specialists in particular groups of mollusks.