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Brown fusus
I have an item of considerable interest to report on. Cypraea aurantium has been collected live here on Guam and both finds
have been verified as true. I first saw Mr. Elbo's shell three days after he had found it and it was still in the rotting out
stage. Mr. Joe Campbell of the Marianas Divers saw the second one that was found with the animal still in the shell. Dead
specimens have been found here before but as far as I can find out these are the first live ones.
The Elbo shell was found clinging to the side of a large rock. This shell now rests in the Montgomery collection. I had quite
a time getting him to part with it but he finally broke down and sold it to me. It measures approximately 3-3/4 by 2-1/8 by
1-7/8 inches. I know this is supposed to be in millimeters but I have no millimeter scale. A black dot on the columella is a
rust blemish as is the small blemish on the dorsum.
Editor: Thank you Tom for this interesting information.
The five little yellow money cowries shown above have an interesting history behind them. They presently belong to my wife,
Daisy, and were left to her by a family friend, Mrs. Leslie Hurum. The envelope in which they are kept has the following note
written on it by Mrs. Hurum.
"These five kupee (Philippines for bracelet or bracelet ornament) were once strung on a velvet ribbon and worn on the wrist
of Queen Kinau, daughter of Kamehameha I and mother of Kamehameha the IV and V. She gave them to her namesake, my
grandmother, Elizabeth Kinau Judd Wilder, when she was a little girl. Three were made into a pin in Italy about 1870.
Grandmother gave them to me in 1894 on my 10th birthday. The two extras I had made into cuff links for my husband about 50
years ago. They would make nice earrings. I am leaving them to you Daisy as I feel the alii (pertaining to royalty) things
should go to the decendants of the alii and they are supposed to bring protection to whoever of the same blood has them."
The photograph reproduced above represents the holotype of Gisortia gisortiana pterophora SCHILDER (1927) from the Middle
Eocene of northern France (Boisgeloup near Gisors); it is 26 cm. long (about 10.4 inches). The curious lateral appendices and
the dilatation of the posterior beak are absent in Gisortia gisortiana PASSY, the length of which varies from 22 to 29 cm.,
so that the unusual characters of pterophora may be interpreted as a sign of beginning degeneration. The photograph was been
made by Mr. V. J. Stanek (Prague) in 1928; an exact drawing of three views of this specimen has been published by the writer
in 1930 (Proc. Malac. Soc. London vol. 19, pl. 11, fig. 14-16). But Gisortia gisortiana is not the largest cowry: the last
representative of the group destined to become extinct is Gisortia hoernesi LEFEVRE from the Upper Eocene (Priabonian) of
northern Italy of which inner casts only are preserved: but the shell must have been at least 35 cm. long (14 inches).
There is still another group of fossil cowries which tend to gigantism, and are even more interesting to malacologists
studying living species only: for it is geologically younger than the Gisortiinae, and it is closely allied to a living group
of species . Zoila (Gigantocypraea) gigas McCOY lived in Middle Miocene (Balcombian) times (about 20 million years ago) in
about the same area (Victoria) as the recent Zoila (Zoila) thersites GASKOIN lives (south Australia), which is closely allied
to gigas so that the two species can be separated subgenerically at most. But while thersites becomes at most 92 mm. long
(coll. SUMMERS), the largest gigas measures 215 mm. (British Museum): it is a well preserved shell showing the total
reduction of columellar teeth as it is in Gisortia, too. In Zoila, the giant members with obsolete dentition also became
extinct, whereas the smaller, more denticulate species survived.
It will be observed, that the largest living cowry species, Macrocypraea cervus shows similar tendencies as the dying
Gisortia and Gigantocypraea though yet in a lesser degree: gigantism, wide aperture, flattened fossula, and irregularities in
columellar dentition. Possibly it may be the next living cowry to become extinct.
It was a somewhat frustrated group of adventurers that gathered at the jetty at Lumut on the first day of the Chinese New
Year. They included Jack Fisher, Stephen Chum, Alan and Mrs. Tideman and their rugged three year old son David plus two
aqualungs, ten large air cylinders, and other underwater equipment. Five days of holidays lay ahead, and now; the Captain had
orders that the boat could now only take us to Pankor Laut. Originally it was to have taken us to the Sembelans, a group of
nine islands, ten miles out beyond the Pankors and their silty water. This island we had thoroughly investigated last
November. Telephone calls to Telok Anson in Penang were in vain as all the Harbor officers were taking advantage of the long
holiday. It seemed that my 500 mile journey from Singapore, Jack and Stephen's 300 mile trip from Kuala Lumpar and Alan and
my family's 300 mile run down from Penang were to be virtually wasted, the next five days were to be spent going over ground
we had already covered without much success.
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