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