NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES No. 255 October 1979 Page 3 
monograph of this overabundant family. The manuscript was completed 
in 1943 but remained unpublished. Since miuniest ade wes aeneeten at 
any time, Cuban collectors were reluctant to describe new species, 
since they felt that all these novelties would appear when the 
Torre-Bartsch manuscript saw the light of day. Any presumably new 
species shown to the revered Don Carlos was met with the comment: 
"Lo tengo en manuscrito” ("I have it in manuscript form.") Hence it 
— surprise no one that such a flood of new names is now re- 
eased. 
However, it is well to point out that the danger of overnaming can- 
not be disregarded. Dr. Jaume, especially in his specific and sub- 
specific diagnoses, based his work upon characteristics of shell 
morphology alone. Now, it is true that even small isolated shell 
populations in Cuba develop readily distinguishable characteristics. 
Whether such characteristics are worthy of nomenclatural designa- 
tions is another question. In their work on some groups of Cuban 
helicinid genera, Clench and Jacobson (1971) discovered, by careful 
mapping of all named forms, a frequent "random distribution associ- 
ated with a single variable group, many of whose features had not 
yet become fixed." Hence they chose to follow the suggestion of 
Mayr and Rosen (1956: 15) who in their work on the variable Cerion 
of Bimini, concluded that "... the application of specific and sub- 
specific names to population samples hindered more than facilitated 
an understanding of variations and evolution." Whether such names 
are justifiable biologically or not can be finally determined only 
by the application of some of the recently developed methods of spe- 
cies determination such as electrophoresis or antigenics. Jaume 
himself remarks that future anatomical studies can bring about “im- 
portant modifications." In the meantime, until such studies are 
completed, the present work offers a useful example of alpha (or 
first step) taxonomy in a complicated field where no revision has 
been undertaken in three-quarters of a century. 
Dr. Jaume's work is based upon the Torre-Bartsch manuscript. It al- 
so includes several papers which appeared after 1943 and numerous 
new species not described in the larger manuscript. The author cor- 
rectly states the case for the Cuban urocoptids. He writes: "... 
(they are extraordinarily abundant; there is practically no local- 
ity in Cuba where some representatives are not found. The majority 
of the species are found strangely isolated at times to a small 
'mogote' or the calcareous side of a single mountain." _ (My trans- 
lation.) Since so many of these forms remained undescribed, it was 
impossible to publish complete local faunal lists without including 
a large number of "Urocoptis sp." The present work is designed to 
overcome this difficulty somewhat. 
Unfortunately it is not easy to use this publication without knowing 
the exact locality where the shells were taken. Even then it is no 
child's play. The work contains no connected descriptions of the 
new taxa. Instead, all the forms appear in determination keys (all 
in English) and another list gives the type-locality of the species. 
Hence to use this book, one must work backwards. First the locality 
(near or at the stated type-locality) must be found in the book. 
This will give one a name, or several names. Now, by using the keys 
backwards -- from the narrowest division to the gradually wider 
ones -- one must decide which of the statements most closely describe 
