
yew YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES No. 263 June-July-Aug. 1980 _Page 7 
een + Bight diving, which usually finds the denizens 
oe. ois De encnet Pee ee stroll", was not always fruitful on 
’ as clear that the more 
coral areas also harbor the greatest variety Papa a eae 
of course there were some exceptionall ood collect 
example, read Twila Bratcher's Hae RTBtion of the negnEsen oe iave: at 
Lunga Point, in the September 1978 FESTIVUS. Another notable loca- 
tion was little Nudha Island off the southeast coast of Guadalcanal 
Apparently there had been no visitors for years, hence the shells 
lay in windrows along the high tide lines, and shells were numerous 
in the lagoons and in deeper water. Roncador Reef was another rich 
source of many and varied specimens, and we regretted the need to 
move on after less than twenty-four hours. 
On some lucky occasions shells seemed practically to jump into my 
collecting bag as at Ngalignagho Island near southeast Santa Isabel 
Island where we made one of our first stops after leaving Honiara. 
On my first dive at this station, as I drifted down to the sloping 
bottom at about thirty feet of depth, there lay on the white coral 
sand in front of me the most beautiful shell I was to find in the 
entire three weeks ... a superb volute, a V. rutila (110 mm). It 
had recently died and the fish had completely cleaned it out, leav- 
ing the rich red and orange gleaming attractively. This was one of 
the few volutes found by anyone on this expedition. Another fortu- 
itous find occurred on a night dive elsewhere. As we swam down to 
the planned starting depth around seventy feet, the first thing my 
light revealed was a perfect little Lambis scorpius (130 mm). But 
there were other occasions when no amount of searching revealed any 
collectable specimens. 
In all, at twenty-four collecting stations, Heidrun and I found more 
than 175 species of shells distributed among twenty-six families, 
plus another twenty specimens we have not been able to identify. I 
would guess that a combined checklist from all twelve participants 
will exceed three hundred species. While collecting shells, we also 
watched for nudibranchs and Dave Mulliner collected and photographed 
about thirty species, including four not yet named. Descriptions of 
these animals are being worked on now. 
Reprinted from The FESTIVUS X, 11, 100-102, November 1978, 
the publication of the San Diego (California) Shell Club 

POST OFFICE SNAILS 
Mr. Colin McLeod of Dundee tells me that several newspapers have 
carried reports of giant West African land snails being discovered 
living in Aberdeen. Anyone suffering losses or delay in post re- 
cently may be interested in the following extract from ‘The Sunday 
Post", 9th. July 1978;.- 
Snail Mail: A letter reached us last week in a sorry state. Frayed 
and torn in one corner, it looked as if it had been chewed. The 
explanation lay in a regrets note from the postmaster where it hed 
been posted. It said simply - "Eaten by snails in the post-box. 
So that's what happens to second-class mail! 
JONCHOLOGISTS' NEWSLETTER No. 67, P- 119 
London, England, December 1978 
