I'll have to come out from under my bridge on this subject... I don't know Mr. Lorenz personally, but I did spend US$100 on his revised "Guide To Worldwide Cowries." There are some nice images but very little that I can find to justify the price. There is a serious problem with "naming" (proposing names for)new cowries AND being a dealer in those commodities. It looks like business, NOT science. In a section added to that edition, a new species is 'named' and a holotype and two paratypes are shown. However, the types specimens cannot be placed in a public institution "due to the high commercial value of these specimens..." There are other problems with this description but they are not worth the time to present. To sum up the two major problems with this (and similar) work, there is no useable, new information about cowries and the book should have been written in the authors' native language THENtranslated to english (or other marketable area) by someone capable of doing so. There are more problems, but I'll save those for the Amazon.com review I'll post later. ANYONE who deals in the commercial trade of cowies AND names new species is only enhancing the commercial aspect of that business. At least, that's how I see it. And, again, nothing personal about Mr. Lorenz,... his work simply epitomizes the phenomenon. Uh oh! Sun's coming up and everyone knows that a troll turns to stone if he's caug...................................... ........................................................... _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail