Just so the task will not be entirely thankless, the coordinating author of the remaining Gastropoda volumes of the "Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology" is Warren D. Allmon. Dr. Allmon is also the Director of the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York, which, if memory serves, holds the sixth largest collection of invertebrate fossils in the United States. The editor of the Treatise is currently Roger Kaesler, Paleontological Institute, University of Kansas, Lawrence. The first editor of the Treatise was Raymond C. Moore; the first volume was published in 1952 or so. Most groups of invertebrates have been covered, and several volumes have been revised or are now undergoing revision. Dr. Kaesler estimates that 6 to 8 years of work by a team of authors are required to complete a volume, and that is not counting authors who procrastinate, or who die before completing their work. The intent for the mollusk volumes is to include all genera whether fossil or living. Work on the Gastropoda volumes has been underway for several years, and will take a long time to complete. Snails comprise a large fraction of the animal kingdom, so this part of the Treatise will be housed in several volumes. There is some talk about developing an electronic database that can be updated continuously. Authors are not paid or reimbursed for this work. To revise a family, an author must see as many type specimens as possible (either by loan through the mail, or in person at museums) and review all the published literature (again, by interlibrary loan and visits to libraries). The author reorganizes the family according to uniform taxonomic criteria, writes elegantly brief descriptions of each genus in a standardized format, and provides photographs of each genus, preferably of the types. This is an enormous amount of labor, and a considerable expense, and it may take years to complete all the visits and loans. However, authorship is well publicized and credited (at least within the profession), and the resulting book is of lasting value. An author gains respect among his or her colleagues by writing for the Treatise, and this can be translated into grants or career opportunities. Also, the author has the satisfaction of knowing that his or her ideas will become standard, because they are put in a standard reference work that will not be revised for decades. Treatise volumes are produced at a surprisingly low cost considering the value of the information within them. They are published by an agreement between the Geological Society of America and the University of Kansas Press, neither of which are run by stockholders mad for quarterly profits. Volumes are reprinted when they go out of print. It's an impressive achievement by a collaboration that has lasted for 50 years and is still producing new work. Andrew K. Rindsberg Geological Survey of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA