Before I start collecting land snails in an area, I designate stations & give
each station a unique code consisting of 2 letters. For example, a section of
the woods near my house is AA, across the creek from there is AB, and so on.
Then within each station, I may designate substations, AAa, AAb, etc. First, I
enter this information in my field book, then in the master catalog. Shells
from a given station are numbered sequentially as AA1, AA2, AA3... I write its
unique number on each shell, unless they are very small & numerous. In the
latter case, I use lot numbers. My master catalog has all the necessary
information (substation, microhabitat, collection date, etc.) Inclusion of
station codes in shell numbers makes it easy to compare shells from different
stations. For large enough shells I prefer to write a unique number on each
shell rather than assign it to a lot number, because this makes it easier (1)
to find a particular shell when necessary and (2) to examine shells from
different stations without any danger of mixing up loose labels.

I have a total of 26X26=676 possible station codes, which I can increase by
including letters not used in the English alphabet. I reserve these for my
collections in the U.S. I also collect in Turkey. There I use combinations of
letters & numbers for stations, for example, A1, or G6, or K3, etc. I number
the shells sequentially as: 1A1, 2A1, 3A1... or 1G6, 2G6..... Again, I devised
this system because I wanted to be able to tell whether or not 2 or more
shells I was comparing were from the same station simply by looking at their
numbers without consulting my catalog.

A.


>
>On Tue, 2 Nov 1999, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> Ken,
>> I am interested in some suggestion for numbering, numbering systems, etc.
>> Thanks in advance
>> Sandro (from Italy)
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>