by Patty Jansen. Privately published, Townsville, Australia, Nov. 1996 4 + 56 pages, 4 color plates, 116 line drawings 6" X 8¬" Paper. About $14.00 U.S.
Patty Jansen loves beaches, and has written a book for beachwalking shell collectors, in northern Queensland, that is. She says in her Introduction: "I like going for a walk on the beach. The beach always holds some surprises and shells are part of this. Northern Queensland beaches are usually quiet. There are no huge pounding waves and large numbers of sunbaking tourists, just mangroves, a large sandflat and sometimes a small rocky outcrop. There may be a few locals walking their dog or fishing." She illustrates the common shells, the small shells, including bivalves, among the fauna of this tropical western Pacific region, shells that the beachwalker is likely to find and perhaps have trouble identifying. Most of the eighty or so shells photographed in her four color plates are beach specimens. There are also over 100 of Patty's excellent line drawings of beach findings. She uses common names for the families so some of them are unfamiliar to Americans: the creepers and cluster whelks, the sugar limpets, pupa shells and the little pipis. But scientific names are there too, with authors and dates, as well as sizes and descriptions of features not clearly visible in the illustrations, and also the ranges of their occurrence in Australia. A contents, introduction, complete index, book list for further reading and a list of Australia's shell clubs complete the book.