Thanks, Art (and a private message as well) for a reminder of the value of
email to the identification process. Yes, of course. My wits must have been
in that tooth the surgeon extracted last Monday.

I wrote,
Also, I would like to point out that having a computer, at least for now,
does not make it easier to collect or identify shells, nor can it
understand observations of the natural history of mollusks. There is still,
despite every innovation, so much science that can be done with no more
than pencil, paper, and the naked eye.

What I meant to say is that computers can't collect or identify mollusks
yet. There is still room for the human mind in conchology. Computers are
already identifying microfossils at some petroleum companies.

I also meant to emphasize that computers are not needed at all for some
kinds of observation, although I suppose you could set up a rig with
automated macrophotography that could be very useful. Kurt Auffenberg often
reminds us that we don't have specimens of all species yet in collections.
(Keep reminding us, Kurt.) Well, we have preserved soft parts of even fewer
species, and still less knowledge of their behavior. A high-school student
watching snails in a home terrarium or aquarium can make a real
contribution to science, and to the future, by recording their activities:
feeding, predation and defense, reproduction, environmental tolerances,
etc. This is information that will be extremely useful when we get past the
current mass extinction and into the period when people start putting the
natural world back together again using remnants of the original
populations.

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama