Very interesting, Lynn. I can tell you where books lost in the mail go. When I was a grad student, I traveled in 1982 to LA (that's Los Angeles, not Lower Alabama) to collect data for my dissertation. As usual, I explored a few secondhand bookstores. One of them acquired its wares by purchase at U.S. Postal Service auctions. The result was remarkably random. There was a stack of five copies of the Peterson field guide to Eastern birds, but none for Western birds, or, indeed, to any other group of organisms. There was a lost thesis, probably one of only five or so in existence. I remember five volumes of The Veliger neatly bound in blue, evidently lost between bindery and library. (No, I couldn't afford them on a student's stipend.) There were whole canvas postal carts filled with books, and little effort had been made to organize anything. The oddest book of all was a travel guide to the seamier parts of American cities. It was in Japanese, but a few polite English phrases stood out here and there: "Please, sir, could you kindly direct me to the red-light district?" The 40's slang recommended by the guidebook was already 40 years of date. Well, I guess you had to be there to appreciate it. Oh, yeah, and that's where I found my copy of that elusive book on drift seeds, and why it is stamped in heavy purple ink on the endpapers: SOLD AT USPS AUCTION. Anyway, that's what happens to lost books in the mail. As to shells, I don't know. Be careful what you send; you never know what will turn up for sale in Los Angeles. Andrew K. Rindsberg