Wups! Sorry about that, Gary. And Emilio, your fortitude is an example to us all! As to the methods of memorizing shells, it's a combination. For me, it's largely visual; I read about shells and examine them by sight. Some of the memory is tactile/kinesthetic; as Emilio Lopez says, the whole experience can return. I rarely have the opportunity to discuss shells with anyone else in person, so their spoken names are often alien to me. I had a decade of experience as a paleontologist before I realized that my pronunciation of Ostrea as "o-STRAY-ah" (a good Latin pronunciation) was unrecognizable to other North Americans, who uniformly pronounce the same word as a homonym of "Austria." On the other hand, I have less of a problem communicating with European paleontologists. It is safe to say that very little of my "shell memory" is auditory. I have a good memory for written information and an excellent memory for music, a relatively poor memory for spoken information and an absolutely wretched one for knots, origami, and dance steps! None of this has to do with my ability to hear, which is above average since I hardly ever attended rock concerts in my youth. If you are curious to determine whether you remember things best by reading, by listening, or by other means, then recall how your teachers taught and which ones reached you the best. Did you pay the best attention to material written on the blackboard, drawn as sketches, or spoken out loud? Can you remember spoken instructions better if you have written them down, even if you do not consult the written note afterward? Do you prefer to use the phone or email to communicate? These kinds of questions can help clarify how you remember things best. A good teacher uses more than one method simultaneously, because every classroom contains people of different abilities. Andrew K. Rindsberg Geological Survey of Alabama