  A known `sticky-hard-sphere' model, defined starting from a
hard-sphere-Yukawa potential and taking the limit of infinite amplitude and
vanishing range with their product remaining constant, is shown to be
ill-defined. This is because its Hamiltonian (which we call SHS2) leads to an
{\it exact}second virial coefficient which {\it diverges}, unlike that of
Baxter's original model (SHS1). This deficiency has never been observed so far,
since the linearization implicit in the `mean spherical approximation' (MSA),
within which the model is analytically solvable, partly {\it masks} such a
pathology. To overcome this drawback and retain some useful features of SHS2,
we propose both a new model (SHS3) and a new closure (`modified MSA'), whose
combination yields an analytic solution formally identical with the SHS2-MSA
one. This mapping allows to recover many results derived from SHS2, after a
re-interpretation within a correct framework. Possible developments are finally
indicated.
