Folks,

A near-miss incident with the postal service today prompts me to point out the following:
It is very risky to pack and send specimens in flat envelopes, even padded ones, as these pass through motorized rollers during the mail handling process. In today's case, the plastic vial with the specimen arrived heavily crazed but happily did not actually fracture, so the shell survived. This was a squeaker, though, and in an earlier case a vial that was included in between the pages of a magazine (for protection) was pulverized.
Even tiny things should be sent in boxes or mailing tubes, as these are handled by humans and not fed into the automated system.

Cheers, beers and negative smears

PC.

Paul Callomon
Collections Manager
Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General Invertebrates
Department of Malacology
Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
Tel 215-405-5096
Fax 215-299-1170
Secretary, American Malacological Society
On the web at www.malacological.org

----------------------------------------------------------------------
[log in to unmask] - a forum for informal discussions on molluscs
To leave this list, click on the following web link:
http://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conch-l&A=1
Type your email address and name in the appropriate box and
click leave the list.
----------------------------------------------------------------------