1 68 WILLIAMS : BRITISH LAND AND FRESHWATER SHELLS. 



watch them ; the first thing a new comer does, after flying over the 

 stable and dropping down near the others with a curious tumbler- 

 like flight, is to run at the nearest bird and give it a dig with its 

 beak, and all the time they are there they are squeaking and fighting 

 with one another in a most unfriendly way. 



Starlings have increased wonderfully of late years in this district. 

 They do an immense amount of good, and, so far as can be ascer- 

 tained, tw harm at all. The farmers and gardeners, for a wonder, 

 seem to be unanimous on this point. The only fault to find with 

 them is that they are too fond of usurping and occupying the 

 nesting-holes of the Woodpeckers. 



Harrogate, \()th April, 1890. 



BRITISH LAND AND FRESHWATER SHELLS. 



Land and Freshwater Shells: an Introduction to the Study of Conchology, 



By J. W. Williams. (' Young Collector ' Series. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 

 1889.) 



If any 'young collector' purchases this book with the hope that 

 it will help him to collect, he will be sadly disappointed. The first 

 four pages only are devoted to ' collecting and preserving slugs, etc' 

 Instead of figures of the various species, he will find anatomical 

 diagrams of ' a segment of the radula of Neritiiia^ ' nervous system 

 of Haliotis' (a sea shell, by the way), 'reproductive organs of 

 H. poinatia,' etc. — all very well in their way, but not in a 'young 

 collector's ' way. For a tyro to read that ' Nalepa has found that in 

 Zoiiites alginis the cells of this " epithelial organ " develop in spring 

 . . . but after that they gradually atrophy, and, according to Longe and 

 Mer, they are entirely wanting in the full-grown animal,' or that 

 'the trypsin of the secretion of the " mitteldarmdriise " converts the 

 proteids of the foodstuffs into peptones, ' is, in our opinion, enough 

 to make his researches end there ; nor is there any glossary to this 

 mass of technicalities, which takes up the bulk of the book — 

 forty-four pages. Then comes a very fair description of the different 

 shells, spoilt, however, by the specific names being placed awkwardly 

 after them. The descriptions are further confused by the different 

 standards of measurement — y-^ i"ch, 5i lines, 10 to 13 mm., occur- 

 ring on the same page ; and we are commonly treated to fractions 

 such as ^4, gV, /„ of an inch. The book is well printed, and the 

 matter interesting to students of molluscan anatomy, but not to a 

 * young collector.' The most useful part of the book is the Con- 

 chological Society's 'census.' — -A.L.E. 



Naturalist, 



