>If you have an idea where the Higo et al. book can be bought I'd appreciate any help or hints.<

I do not remember what the source was for my copy.  The publisher is Elle Scientific Publications, a division of Anne Corporation, Osaka-fu, Yao-shi, Suehiro-cho 5-2-1, 581-001 Japan

I do not know what portion of that is acutally useful address information; I had to ask someone who had lived in Japan to confirm that Osaka is the city.

I found a picture of the book on the printer's website at
http://village.infoweb.ne.jp/~fvgg5580/yuko/ by clicking on all the buttons with Japanese on them until I found it, but I have no idea what other information might be there, as it is in Japanese.

>        Thank you for the time and effort that you made to help out with the names that I sent to Conch-L.  I really should have the above publication, even though there are no illustrations.  Does it have all the synomyms of previously published Japanese species?  And the Japanese names besides?<

It tries to cover all shelled marine taxa of Japan, including outlying islands.  The transliterated Japanese names are also included.

It is very handy for looking up systematics.  The bivalve section seems to draw heavily on Bernard, Cai, and Morton, 1993, Catalogue of the Living Marine Bivale Mollusks of China.  I have found a few errors in the endings of species names.  They seem to tend towards the splitter end of things at the genus level.

I believe that a companion volume with illustrations is coming out, if not already published, but obtaining it requires even greater expenditure.

    Dr. David Campbell
    Old Seashells
    University of Alabama
    Biodiversity & Systematics
    Dept. Biological Sciences
    Box 870345
    Tuscaloosa, AL  35487 USA
    [log in to unmask]

That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at Droitgate Spa