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.

Carrier "Shells have long fascinated scientists and laymen alike with their habit of fixing foreign objects - shells, pebbles or coral etc. to the surface of their own shells. This book gives a welcome popular coverage to the living members of the family."

This impressive and important distribution mollusc atlas is the second volume in the Fauna Helvetica series, the first being a Diptera checklist. It is the result of a project launched on in 1981 although the bulk of record accumulation took place between 1988 and 1997. The basis of the work is 279 distribution maps using the 5x5 Km square as a mapping unit (four times as fine a grid as the Great Britain and Ireland scheme) to cover indigenous freshwater and land mollusc species, subspecies and segregates.

The eagerly awaited second edition of "the atlas" has finally appeared, 23 years after its forerunner, to the great delight of those who have contributed to the mapping scheme over the years. So how does the new compare with the old? The new edition has a smaller format, a hard cover and reliable binding. The introductory text is far more extensive and reviews the 'Early history of recording'.