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Supplier shells
On the northern limits of Papeete, in the section called Patutoa, extensive dredgings from the lagoon of Patutoa have been
used to fill in a large part of the lagoon north of the radio station and fuel docks. Before I went to Tahiti, Mr. Richard
Sixberry, an American who has lived in Tahiti for several years, and who with his wife accompanied me on several collecting
trips around the island, made frequent, and for a while daily, visits to the dredged fill where he gathered an astounding
variety of species. He and I collected in this fill one afternoon, and also spent some time on the reef immediately adjacent
to this man-made land. Later I visited the area alone, and gathered further specimens. All in all, more than 200 different
species have come from these spoil heaps. The commonest shell by far was Cypraea erosa L., while the next most numerous
species were Cypraea carneola L. and Cymatium aquatilis (Reeve). The specimens are, for the most part, in fine condition,
some appearing quite fresh, others, however, have a distinct yellowish cast. At the present time, this area is no longer
available for collecting, since the shell-bearing fill has been covered by other material, and the site is now one of active
construction.
...
It is with a great deal of pleasure that the Philippines Malacological Society announces the election to Honorary Life Member
of Professor Doctor F. A. Schilder, world renowned cypraeologist.
Dr. Schilder has long been interested in the Cypraeidae from Philippines and has written several outstanding papers
concerning them.
Recently, he and his wife Dr. Maria Schilder have been studying preserved specimens of Philippines cowries with respect to
the relationship of sex to size within a species. The results of this study should prove most interesting to Philippines
collectors and will be published in forthcoming issues of the Philippines Shell News.
A large and attractive specimen of Cypraea (Erosaria) guttata Gmelin has recently been found in the British Solomon Islands.
It was obtained from a fisherman by Reverend J. van der Riet near the Catholic Mission at Useuse, Ataa District, Malaita
Island, Solomons, in June, 1963. The specimen, with the dead mollusk inside, came from the stomach of a fish brought up from
a depth of about 40 fathoms. The shell is in excellent condition except for a pin-point tooth scar on the side of the dorsum.
Length of shell: 64.7; width: 37.8; height: 30.0mm. It is the 17th known specimen and the fourth largest. It was purchased by
a group of private collectors for over $1,000, plus trade goods, and has been donated to the research collections of the
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. F. R. Woodward (Journal of Conchology, vol. 25, pp. 180-183; Oct., 1963) gives
details concerning the other 16 specimens.
If you look upon the posterior wall of a cowry shell from behind, the whorls evolve from the spire to the aperture in the
direction as the clock's hand goes, gradually growing in diameter. If this evolution would be contrary to the clock's hand,
the shell would be called sinistral (i. e. evolving to the left). A sinistral cowry would look like the figure of the dextral
Cypraeovula fuscodentata printed by some accident, inversely in Sean Raynon Sabado (n.s.) 46:4 (October, 1963) as the inverse
numerals 1, 2, and 3 prove: the basal view shows the aperture and the narrow outer lip on the left instead of on the right,
when the shells anterior extremity points to below in the figure.
Fiji:
Mr. W. O. Cernohorsky has quoted walkeri bregeriana from New Caledonia and Fiji, in his recently published Catalogue of
Living Cypraeidae (Frankfurt-Main 1963). In fact, since 1962 at least eight bregeriana have been collected in Fiji, all off
the West Coast (Nadi and Momi) facing towards the chief habitat of bregeriana, New Caledonia; especially Mr. A. Jennings has
dredged, at the islands Wading, Akuilau, and Namotu (20 miles off Nadi) several dead and living specimens, one oliviform
shell included of which I could examine the radula (Mr. Cernohorsky presented me a shell from Momi, coll. Schilder No. 17154,
which is 17 mm. long). All specimens show the typical orange base, often darker brown in the center of the inner lip, and the
peculiar white specks on base and margins, but they are much smaller (16 to 21 mm., mean 18 mm.) than typical bregeriana from
New Caledonia (20 to 33 mm., mean 25 mm.). These shells look like a population displaced far from its original habitat in New
Caledonia, where bregeriana is less rare, to an area with less favorable environments, as it is in the two dwarf Erosaria
ocellata Linnaeus from Tjilanat Eureun, South West Java widely separated from their Indian relations (see 1938, Prodrome, p.
138).
South East New Guinea:
If bregeriana could spread from New Caledonia to Fiji, it probably also could spread to North West: therefore I now do not
doubt its occurrence in Joanett Is., Louisiade Archipelago, from which locality Smith (1888, Journ. de Conchyl. 36:313) has
described three bregeriana of 21 to 22 mm.
The indications of habitat: Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Victoria, New Zealand, and Tahiti evidently are erroneous.
Erronea walkeri Sowerby is a rather uncommon cowry species so that it is absent in many collections (Schilder 1940, Arch.
Mollusk. 72:168) and the limits of its distribution are inaccurately known. In our Prodrome (1938, Proc.Malac. Soc. 23:151)
and in my catalogue of all living and fossil Cypraeacea (1941, Arch. Mollusk. 73:96) four "geographical races" have been
distinguished, characterized chiefly by the color of the shell (1952, Mem. Inst. Belgique (2) 45:125); the geographical
distribution of these four races comprised the following areas: walkeri Sowerby 1832: Seychelles, Cargados, Maldives;
surabajensis Schilder 1937: Philippines, Cochinchina to Lombok and Eastern Indonesia (holotype in lower Pleistocene beds of
Modjokerto, Java); continens Iredale 1935: Torres Strait to Moreton Bay; bregeriana Crosse 1868: New Caledonia (and Louisiade
Archipelago?).
The following names should be treated as synonyms: amabilis Jousseaume 1881 = walkeri; merista Iredale 1939 = continens;
barbara Kenyon 1902 and rossiteri Dautzenberg 1903 = bregeriana. The juvenile Ipserronea problematica Iredale 1935 surely
does not belong to walkeri (as Allan 1956, Cowry Shells p. 49 suggested), but to Erronea pyriformis Gray 1824 (see Iredale
1939, Austr. Zoologist 9:317).
In these years after World War II, many interesting cowries have been collected, and much new information became known to us,
also concerning walkeri, so that we were obliged to revise our views, both with regard to taxonomy and distribution.
Taxonomy: The East Australian continens cannot be separated from the Malayan surabajensis; but there seems also to be no
constant character of the Lemurian walkeri, though the latter seems to be generally smaller, paler, and less zonate than the
Malayan "race'' (which should be called continens by law of priority). Whereas the Philippine shells from Siassi Is. are
usually very large (30 to 35 mm.) and dark (dorsal zone vividly brown, well marked, aperture purple throughout), a population
from Ubey on Bohol Is. (destroyed in the museum of Hamburg, one shell No. 3120 in my collection excepted) recalls the
Lemurian shells in size (17 to 25 mm.) and color (creme, zones obsolete, interstices of columellar teeth only pale purplish).
Therefore all specimens from Lemuria to the Philippines and Queensland should be called walkeri. However, the New Caledonian
race bregeriana has proved to be of almost specific rank, and is characterized by tiny opaque white specks embedded into the
glossy orange base and margins, like no other cowry species, Chelycypraea testudinaria Linnaeus excepted: these white specks
are never absent in well preserved bregeriana (though overlooked by its author!), and generally are recognizable in beach
shells too; but they have never been observed in any walkeri coming from farther west than New Caledonia (Joanett Is.
excepted, see below).
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