This beautiful book is a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the state of knowledge of the Mollusca of Australia. It is a compilation of contributions, in the form of whole or parts of chapters, from 70 authors of high standing in their subjects and from many countries, mainly but not wholly from the English speaking world. The scale of this undertaking is reflected not only in the need to publish this volume in two parts but also, sadly, by the decease of 5 of the contributors, among them Vera Fretter, Tom Thompson and Alan Solem prior to publication.

This is a shortish review, in Russian, of interspecific and intraspecific variability and adaptation resulting from natural selection and various environmental effects, taking as an example the land snails, principally the Eurasian Bradybaena fruticum and related species. Special attention is paid to climatic, environmental, and other ecological factors, and their effects upon shell size and fertility etc., and shell colour variation in relation with vegetation.

Widespread interest in the biogeography of land and feshwater Mollusca led to a 'Colloquium on Non-marine Mollusc Biogeography' being held at the 8th International Malacological Congress in Budapest, Hungary in 1983 This collected work presents the text of the 19 main papers presented at the Colloquium.

This reprint consists of a folder containing a complete reproduction of Sowerby's original text and 9 loose plates in a pocket at the back. The check list is not bound up with the text, which makes it much easier to use.

The publisher is to be congratulated on the beautiful reproductions of Sowerby's original plates, which are in every respect satisfactory. This reprint makes available to all interested an important contribution to the study of the Naticidae since few could aspire to own a copy of the now rare and very costly Thesaurus.

A short and inadequate description of this publication would be that it lists 393 species of Mollusca (out of 629 known from the area) collected by the first two authors from shell-sand from Algeciras Bay, 203 of which had not been recorded there before, and seven of which are described as new species. This in itself would make it a significant addition to our knowledge of the malacofauna of S.W. Iberia, but there is also a wealth of useful supplementary information.

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.