Mr. Rosenberg's Malacolog is a wonderful piece of scholarship, and a good reference.  The main drawback is that he seems to stick to the published literature - it seems to be mostly a "literature review" of the spp reported in various publications.  That is all well and good, but from first hand experience, i have found this literature to be quite "erratic" and full of all manner of errors - even for some of the most common species such as various Astartidae, which are in fact easily confused if one is in a hurry, as many contractors who prepare reports for various institutions and purposes, which end up as componants of "the published record".  Therefore, one should use and quote such literature-based works as the malacolog with care, recognizing that they are quite likely to contain a lot of errors arising from the litereature base.   A good example of just how poorly known the north western Atlantic shell bearing molluuscs actually are, is the case of the Carditid genus Cyclocardia.  In the literature, wide ranges are cited for 2 species: borealis Conrad, and novangliae Morse.  In fact, from the material i have seen, borealis only reaches the Laurentian gulf, and possibly the Grand Banks, where it is replaced by novangliae, which is quite rare south of Newfoundland waters.  The kicker is that there is a third species with no hairs on it: quite bald as opposed to the other two which are as hirsute as monkeys. This third, immediately differentiatable species is the only one i have seen from Labrador north, and is present also on the Grand Banks with one interesting outpost in St. Mary's Bay, which is NE of Lurcher Bank, starting at Brier Island, which is the last of the islands separating the main part of the Gulf of Maine from the Bay of Fundy.  This species is undescribed, after being seen by dozens or more likely scores of amateur and professional researchers for likely at least a hundred years or more, yet it is immediately recognizable at a glance as being different from the other two, due to its unclothed condition (and overall shape, i might add.....)  As for the Turrids, there are at least 60 spp in the region (Cape Cod to the pole), but i can only confidently match a maximum of 15 to the names found in the literature, using photos of these species from Boreal Europe and Asia, where their prototypes came from. A good number of the remaining 45 may represent regional forms of some of these, but if i were a betting man i'd lay good odds on a lot of them being in fact undescribed: it appears that many people involved in the malacological history of the region just associated species they were not particualrly interested in, with species from "the literature" which they resembled, without a truly "critical" examination.  Of course, i could be ***complely*** out to lunch in all of this, .... nevertheless i would advise anyone reading or using the published marine shell bearing literature (or compilations which use it, such as the Malacolog) for Eastern Canada and the Gulf of Maine, to adopt a "caveat emptor" attitude in general.

From  a Frosty Friday in beautiful downtown Timberlea,   Ross Mayhew.

>>>Gary Rosenberg's Malacolog at>http://erato.acnatsci.org/wasp/findsnail.php>covers all the gastropods of the entire western Atlantic seaboard from pole to pole. Very comprehensive, with links to all the relevant literature and citations of synonymy etc. No pretty pictures yet, though.>>PC.>>Paul Callomon
>

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