Shells of the Tropical Seas

Abstract

The author has a pleasant way of writing about what is usually made dull. She might quite well expand her pamphlet into a short volume to reawaken interest in shells. A little story is told us about most conspicuous families, their varieties of shells and their beauty and interest being brought out with subtlety. The author should visit Tuti-corin, Ceylon, or the Andamans, and collect her molluscs on the reef flats, if she wants to make the attractive picture of the living animals that the present generation requires. We want to know much more about the cilia-moving forms and the mode of feeding of bivalves. We wonder whether pressure is of any importance in the distribution, and surely diminution of light is only indirectly so as inhibiting the growth of the plants on which they feed. There is no laminarian zone round southern India, being replaced by the coralline zone, which extends to about 30 fm., where it is stated that it commences. Nor is any evidence given that the pearly nautilus or any other existing animal lived in palæozoic times. To say nothing about the squids is extraordinary.

Shells of the Tropical Seas.

Ida Colthurst. Pp. iii + 13 + 6 + 6 plates. (Calcutta and Simla: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1930.) 4.8 rupees.