In the words of its own Introduction, 'this volume is the first of two which gather together current information about Australian marine prosobranch molluscs and describe and illustrate their shells as an aid to identification for the purposes of business or pleasure'. Part two will deal with the neogastropods (Muricoidea, Cancellarioidea and ' Conoidea). The present part includes the remaining orders of prosobranchs, following the most recent classification ID that the three ptenoglossan superfamilies Triphoroidea, Janthinoidea and Eulimoidea come at the end of the hook.

Freshwater molluscs have suffered greatly at the hands of man. Either we destroy them by polluting or damming the streams in which they live or, because some of them act as intermediate hosts to medically or economically important parasites, we attempt to eradicate them systematically. Sadly we seem to succeed in polluting the harmless species more than we succeed in controlling the parasitic diseases. It is the latter aim that has led to David Brown's excellent and thorough book, as the title implies.

This atlas is the first to show molluscan distributions by tetrads (2x2 kilometre grid squares), an approach pioneered by the botanists. About 120 tetrads cover the Isle of Wight. Although the smallest English county, it is unusually varied in its geology and physiography and detailed mapping was therefore expected to reveal interesting relationships, obscured by the relatively coarse units (10 km squares) used in the national Atlas. This has indeed proved to be the case.

Hawaiian Marine Shells is part IV of a projected series of six volumes on the marine fauna of the Hawaiian Islands. It stands complete and self-contained for those uninterested in phyla other than mollusca.

The first volume of this series (Functional Anatomy and Physiology) appeared in 1975, and papers in volume 2A have notes that the mss were delivered in 1972, or submitted in 1972 and returned for hasty correction in 1977, or submitted in 1975, etc.; similarly volume 2B contains no reference later than 1976 - there seems to have been some delay in the publication. Nevertheless, these are two very useful volumes. The chapters of the first (2A) are: Systematics and comparative morphology of the Basommatophora (B. Hubendick); Classification of the land Mollusca (A.

Great credit for studying the slugs of Russia must go to H. Simroth (1851 -1917). His most significant monographic study is Die Nacktschnecken des Russischen Reiches (321 pp., St. Petersburg, 1901). In this work he already paid attention to anatomy. Furthermore he also wrote important studies on the slugs of the Caucasus and central Asia. P. Hesse (1926), using Simroth's studies, put together a classification of slugs to which most research has adhered until now.

The book consists of an introduction in the first 29 pages which also include 12 colour plates illustrating a variety of shell forms. This is followed by the bulk of the plates (13-158) and these by the main text (pp. 177-219) and index.

This attractively presented pocket-sized hardback covers 660 species of European marine and non-marine molluscs. The text is in German, but for those who do not read German, it is useful for the colour photographs alone. These include smaller species of non-marine molluscs not often illustrated photographically, making this book a welcome addition to the library.

When is an atlas not an atlas? When it has no maps and, in the present case, it is a supplement and amendment to a previously published series of maps: the 1982 Sea Area Atlas of Marine Mollusca of Britain and Ireland by the same compiler and publisher.

The Epitoniidae, although including some of the World's most elegant shells, has long been a neglected family. A few of the larger species are illustrated time and again in popular shell books - there is probably no general book on tropical shells which does not illustrate Epitonium scalare - yet the vast majority of the nearly 600 smaller species have been largely overlooked.