Dear Paul,

in september or october I can send you a nice selection of Austrian and Italian landshells
if you like as a nice starting collection. Did you get the annual report of the museum.
Helmut from Innsbruck

Helmut "Helix" Nisters
Franz-Fischer-Str. 46
A-6020 Innsbruck / Austria / Innsbruck
phone and fax: 0043 / 512 / 57 32 14
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
web:    www.netwing.at/nisters/
           (please visit it and sign guestbook)

office:
Natural History Department of the
Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum Innsbruck
Feldstrasse 11 a
A-6020 Innsbruck / Austria / Europe
phone: 0043 / 512 / 58 72 86 - 37

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Gee, these guys who are extolling the pleasantries of marine collecting must
be divers!  No doubt accustomed to gliding silently and effortlessly over
pristine reefs in pursuit of those glossy little egg-shaped things.  Haven't
they ever slogged through ankle-deep mud, silt, and stinking decaying
vegetation in search of Melongenas?  Or clambered over massive boulders
coated with shifting slime-covered seaweed and razor-edged barnacles,
fingers and ankles bleeding, for a handful of periwinkles?  Or allowed a ten
foot wave to fling them up onto an outcrop of exposed volcanic rock in order
to grab a shell before the next wave rips them loose?  I'll take a quiet
walk in the New England woods picking up land snails any day :-)
Paul M.