SHELL LIFE. By Edward Step, F.L.S. (Warne. 7s. 6d) —rt
should be enough, perhaps, simply to record the fact that Professor Step has written a book about British shell-fish, or molluscs—whichever you like to call them : both terms are inaccurate. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to give tins admirably comprehensive and lucid little " encyclopedia molluscs' its due, and we are not to be cheated out of it. The mysterious, iridescent world of these marine animals is their porcelain houses becomes more and more interesting the more We learn of it : their architectural designs, their colour-schemes, and their astonishing globe-trotting feats, provide a field of research which is surely just as fascinatiunngg as the study of bird-life. Who would not know more, and who, even now, knows anything like enough of these secret dwellers in the sea ? This book deals with the subject in an anpreterious, popular way, and we shall not attempt to treat
of it otherwise ; but it inky- be said that even the pioneer- biologists in this region will not be wasting their time on its perusal.
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