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do not drop any on your clothes, nor get it on your fingers. The latter you can dip in the water, but the clothing, if touched, will be instantly and permanently stained. When the shells are cleaned to your entire satisfaction—and only a few may require the acid treatment,—rub them over with a vestige of sperm oil. This brings up the colour better than anything else, and is incomparably better than varnish, which I advise you to leave severely alone. Applying varnish to a shell is about as iniquitous a proceeding as daubing it over Chippendale or old oak furniture—a vandalism not to be dreamed of.

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And now a few words as to the description of the shells. I have not attempted to give any classification whatever, nor have many words of thunderous length been permitted to escape from the glossary; each species has a plain and, I hope, a fairly accurate account of it drawn up, which, taken with the illustrations, should make identification reasonably easy.

ou may readily surmise that there is a difficulty in the diversity of names when you come across one species which has no less than six different ones. Take, for instance, the Bathytoma Cheesemani; it is known as the Drillia Cheesemani, Pleurotoma Cheesemani, Surcula Cheesemani, Bathytoma Zelandica, and the Pleurotoma Zelandica. Truly its name is Legion! But I have described it only under the name by which it is to be found in Henry Suter's Manual of New Zealand Mollusca. This book, and the atlas of plates illustrating it, forms a most valuable work, and one that no true collector can dispense with. But, while recommending this work, it must be borne in mind that many of the names employed have since been found to be merely synonyms, and some of the species, and even genera, have been entirely deleted on purely anatomical grounds. A critical analysis of Suter's Manual—particularly in regard to nomenclature—has been embodied in a paper written by Iredale, communicated to the New Zealand Institute and published in the Transactions and Proceedings of that Society for the year 1914 in Vol. XLVII. This volume can be purchased by the public, but as the review in question contains neither figures nor descriptions, it will be understood that the Manual is, certainly in the first instance, the book to buy. Then, if the study of it prove sufficiently engrossing to make it desirable to adopt the newer or more correct nomenclature, the collector can take Iredale's paper and make all the necessary alterations in the labelling and arrangement of his specimens. Speaking