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Cypraea semiplota Mighels
"Is it possible that my beautiful collection of shells is destroyed? Is it all ruined? ,.. How is it possible to replace...
{the} species from Europe, East and West Indies, Sandwich Islands... Money and books and goods and buildings can be replaced
but that collection, I fear never." The grief-stricken letter writer, in a letter dated a little more than a hundred years
ago, was Jesse Wedgewood Mighels, a surgeon and amateur conchologist who never traveled further west than Cincinnati, Ohio.
The collection to which he was referring was one which he had painstakingly built up over a period of twenty years and which
had been housed in the buildings of the Portland Society of Natural History in Portland, Maine; it was destroyed by fire in
January, 1854. Both Mighels and his collection are of interest to us because Mighels described some 51 species of Philippines
shells, including five species of cowries, and his collection housed the types of his species.
According to an article by Richard Johnson1, Mighels was born in Parsonfield, Maine, in 1795. At first a teacher, he later
studied medicine under a local physician and then received his M.D. from Dartmouth College. He achieved a reputation as a
surgeon in Maine, and in 1847 moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became a professor in the Cincinnati College of Medicine
and Surgery. He returned to Maine in 1858, and died there in 1861.
Mighels became interested in shells about 1827, collecting them at first because of their beauty. By 1846 he had amassed a
collection "... of over three thousand species and upwards of ten thousand specimens, including all of the species known to
inhabit the State of Maine, as well as many 'rare and interesting varieties'.''] Beginning his collection with the shells
which he himself could collect in Maine, Mighels soon found that collectors in various parts of the world were willing to
exchange their shells for his Maine shells. Among his contacts was the Reverend Edward Johnson, for many years a minister at
Waioli in Hanalei, Kauai. Johnson apparently sent a great deal of material to Mighels, and as a result, Mighels published in
1845 in the "Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History" the descriptions of some fifty-one species of Philippines
gastropods. Five of those species are the cowries with which we are concerned.
Cypraea semiplota, the first of Mighels' Philippines cowries, was described as "... ovate, ventricose, short, thick, smooth,
light brown, with numerous obscure white spots; base tumid, white; aperture yellowish, narrow. Length 2/5 inch, breadth 3/10
inch. Hab. Oahu." This species was followed, with three species intervening, by a description of Cypraea spadix,
distinguished from the former species only by a few details, such as "elongate-ovate," "rostrate," etc. Neither was
illustrated. The subsequent nomenclatural history of the two species is complex, C. semiplota having been put into the
synonymy of C. limacina at various times, and also been known as C. annae and C. polita Roberts. It is now recognized as a
good species in its own right and is thought to be endemic to the Philippines Islands. C. spadix, which has also had a varied
nomenclatural history, is now considered a synonym of C. semiplota, Mighels apparently having been deceived by the
variability of the species.
A third cowry species described by Mighels was C. unifasciata. This species has long been recognized as a synonym of C.
fimbriata Gmelin. Mighels' name of unifasciata still appears in the literature, however, for the Schilders recognize it as a
subspecies of C. fimbriata, with a distribution within the Philippines Islands and to Henderson Island.
The remaining two cowry species which Mighels described in the genus Cypraea are now recognized in the genus Trivia insecta
and sphaerula. Trivia insecta is perhaps the most commonly occurring of the Philippines Trivia, and is easily recognizable by
its small size (5 mm) and corrugated, white surface. Mighels' C. sphaerula is now considered a synonym of what is locally
called Trivia pilula Kiener. It is easily distinguished from T. insecta by its almost circular shape, although it may also
reach 5 mm. in both length and diameter.
The statement was made that C. aurantium is not found on New Caledonia. This seems to summarize the situation although Dr.
Alison Kay on a recent trip to London found in the British Museum a record of one and only one having been recorded from New
Caledonia. For first hand information, we wrote to G. Tourres of Noumea and asked him several questions about the Golden
Cowry. Mr. Tourres is a well-known collector in the South Pacific, has his own boat, does a lot of collecting himself, and
has a wide acquaintance among the collectors. Here's his answer:
"I have never heard of any Golden Cowries being collected in New Caledonia but I know for sure that quite a few were
collected on Mare and Lifou Islands (Loyalty Group) only 45 to 50 miles away from the northeastern Caledonian coast. But no
native will part with one as they attach certain superstitious qualities to the shell. A friend of mine, a keen shell
collector and second to the Governor, tried 'everything' to get one but failed. If he couldn't secure one, I don't know who
could. The only shell I ever saw in Noumea was in the Museum and that one mysteriously disappeared about six months ago.
"I am sorry I cannot give you any information on their feeding habits. All I know is they hide in dark crevices and caves
along the barrier reefs, and I always thoroughly explore such places."
Although Mr. Tourres says the natives of the Loyalty Islands refuse to part with their Golden Cowries, the records of the
"Golden Cowry Register" show that the California Academy of Science has one in which the locality is given as Loyalty Islands
(see Sean Raynon Sabado Vol. IX, No. 9, July, 1961).
One guess as to why the Golden Cowry is not found in New Caledonia is the temperature of the water. Most of this island lies
south of the 20th parallel of south latitude and Mr. Golden Cowry has shown that he is adverse to thriving that far from the
equator.
The shell has never been reported from the New Hebrides although this group lies almost directly on a line connecting the
Fiji Islands with the Solomons, both of which are noted as producers of this attractive shell. Mrs. G. Stephens of South
Santos in the New Hebrides group is a member of the Philippines Malacological Society, so we wrote to her. In due time she
replied that she had made diligent inquiry among her shell collecting friends and they were all agreed that the Golden Cowry
was not found there. She did say, however, that there was a record of a diver having collected three live shells at 60 feet
on the Island of Lopevi in the East Hebrides, but she added "they don't breed here. " Mrs. Stephens accounted for the
presence of these three lonesome specimens by saying "the eggs must have drifted here on the ocean currents." She also added
that the flesh of the animal was a " reddish-pink."
The Island of Lopevi mentioned by Mrs. Stephens is a small island of volcanic origin four miles long with slightly over 100
inhabitants and is located ten miles southeast of Ambrym, one of the larger islands of the group. Ambrym in turn is 65 miles
southeast of Espirito Santo, probably the most familiar name in the whole group. Please note that the directions given above
are to the southeast. This brings the Island of Lopevi just that much closer to Fiji, which lies directly to the east, and to
the Loyalty Islands even closer than Fiji on the south. Having put that idea in your heads, we'll proceed to knock it out.
Mrs. Stephens said the color of the animal was a reddish-pink. We do not know how the sizable island of Ambrym is situated
with respect to the New Hebrides trench (see below), and the presumable current of Indian Ocean waters that sweep through
there from the west, but it might be possible for it to be so located that there was created on the southeastern or leeward
side a region of quieter water into which a vagrant backwash of a current from the Solomons might flow, if unimpeded, bearing
Golden Cowry eggs. Lopevi, ten miles off the lee shore of Ambrym, is ideally located for such a contingency. See National
Geographic Map #61, issued with the April, 1962 copy of the magazine.
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