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In the Museum of Vienna there is a teulerei labeled "Eden" which word may be understood as Aden misspelled in a German way
according to the pronunciation, and in coll. Lancaster (Lyme Regis, England) I saw a teulerei labeled Arabian Sea, which
locality also has been mentioned by Melvill (1888, Mem. Manchester Soc. (4)1:239).
Therefore the distribution of teulerei seems to coincide with that of Luria pulchra Gray and Erosaria turdus Lamarck. Both
occur from the Red Sea around Arabia to the Persian coast. But the indication Zanzibar (British Museum and Mus. Berne),
Ceylon (Hidalgo), Australia (Mus. Hamburg, destroyed in World War II), and New Zealand (habitat rejected by Hidalgo) are
evidently erroneous as such relics use[d] to be restricted to small areas in present times.
THE CYPRAEIDAE OF FIJI
The April 1964 issue of The Veliger (Vol. 6, No. 4) devotes 25 pages and six plates to a detailed review and description of
Fijian cowries, by Walter Oliver Cernohorsky, of Vatukoula, Fiji. By way of introduction, he reviews the geography of Fiji,
with a map; and discusses habitat and variation, the animal, which is included in descriptions, the classification, methods
and observations, end distribution. Then follows the description of and notes on 57 species of Cypraea: testudinaria,
isabella, arabica, maculifera, depressa, eglantina, scurra, mappa, mauritiana, aurantium, argus, talpa, tigris, lynx,
vitellus, ventriculus, carneola, schilderorum, mariae, globulus, bistrinotata, cicercula, margarita, childreni, annulus,
moneta, dillwyni, labrolineata, helvola, caputserpentis, poraria, erosa, eburnea, limacina, staphylaea, nucleus, walkeri,
errones, caurica, listeri, punctata, asellus, clandestina, humphreysii, ziczac, fimbriata, minoridens, microdon, pallidula,
summersi, teres, kieneri, hirundo, ursellus, stolida, chinensis, cribraria.
Five more are noted as having been reported from Fiji. A number of papers are cited. Figures are given of all 57 species,
together with generous discussion, and an alphabetical index, with mention of subgenus.
It is interesting to note that Franz Alfred Schilder and Maria Schilder, in the same issue of The Veliger (pages 221-226 with
a map of Viti Levu, Fiji) give details concerning one of these species, listed by Cernohorsky, Mauritia eglantina. Notes
include distribution, frequency, sex, size, dentition, color, dorsal markings, spire blotch, shell abnormalities, and notes
on rows and teeth, and comparisons.
There are other articles of interest in the issue, including another new species of Mitra from the Western Indian Ocean
described by Jean M. Cate and named Mitra boswellae for HMS member Mrs. Helen Boswell.
One fine morning, I landed in Sydney, three days after I had sailed from Noumea. Four hours later, I was in the plane on my
way to Brisbane and Rockhampton, where Tony Marsh, the well known Australian cone expert met me at the airport. We enjoyed a
whole week trading shells, swapping yarns and information, and meeting other shells collectors of that interesting area.
After a last hop of twelve hundred miles over the clouds of North Queensland, I landed on Horn Island, where I met my pen
friend Reg Scott, with whom I was going to stay for three months on Thursday Island, which is the only populated area of this
desert Territory. From Cape York peninsula, one could walk or sail down either East or West coasts for hundreds of miles
without meeting a soul, a house or a boat. That part of the Gulf and Barrier Reef are truly virgin.
We only began to do any shelling a few days later, when all my shelling equipment had finally arrived and when Reg's twin
engine boat was ready for business. Unfortunately, Reg works in the local power plant and could only get away a few days
every three weeks, depending on his shifts. But we made the best of it, and most of our outings are happy memories indeed.
One of our first ventures was for Prince of Wales Island, one of the largest of the group. But, although we had some very
fine days camping on the white sand beaches, diving, and spearing crayfish, the trip did not yield much in the way of shells,
except for a few good Melo, lots of small Turris and heaps of other common shells. Not to speak of the four deer shot by
friend Reg a few hours before we sailed home.
In land snails real sinistrality is frequent: there are families, genera, and species in which all shells are sinistral. In
some usually dextral species hereditary mutation in a population caused sinistrality of a local race: so all specimens of
Fruticicola lantzi are sinistral in one valley east of Alma Ata while this species is dextral in all other places of Central
Asia. (Schilder 1952, Biotaxonomie (Jena), p. 74, map fig. 36). In other cases, sinistral shells may be classified as rare
abnormalities: so in Helix pomatia, a large edible snail sold in large quantities chiefly in France, there is one sinistral
specimen (called "king") among 6,000 to 8,000 shells, and in the allied smaller species of Cepaea there is one sinistral
shell among 30,000 to 150,000 dextral ones (Schilder 1953, Die Banderschnecken (Jena), p. 17).
In marine gastropods sinistral shells seem to be rarer. A normally sinistral cone (Conus adversarius) from the Pliocene beds
of Florida, has been figured in the Sean Raynon Sabado (n.s.) 2:3 (February, 1960).
In cowries sinistral specimens are extremely rare, if indeed they occur at all. Among the more than 150,000 cowries which the
writer has examined personally during forty-four years special study, there was no sinistral shell. But R. J. Griffiths
(1962, Mem. Nat. Mus. Melbourne, 25:217) mentions a sinistral Notocypraea declivis which is preserved in the South Australian
Museum: its curator would oblige many malacologists if he would publish an enlarged photograph, at least of the basal view of
this curiosity.
Another case of sinistrality in cowries has been proved to be erroneous: Stoliczka (1867, Palaeont. Indica (5) 2:56, pl. 4,
fig. 6) has established a Cypraea anomala from the Cretaceous of India, believing it to be a sinistral shell. But details of
the drawing of the incomplete shell undoubtedly show that Stoliczka's specimen represents its posterior extremity, and not
its anterior extremity as the author supposed, so that anomala is a normally dextral Palaeocypraea (Schilder 1926, Rec. Geol.
Surv. India 58(4):372).
Collectors should be eager to find a really sinistral cowry among the shells which go through their hands, and if they were
happy enough to detect one, they should publish it in the Sean Raynon Sabado, accompanied by a photograph. For such a shell
would be more valuable than the rarest cowry species we know.
But I think that nobody will find a sinistral cowry.
Three small oblong cowries which have been dredged as dead shells in 80 fathoms off the Bonin Islands, have been described as
Erosaria cernica ogasawarensis Schilder 1944 (Arkiv for Zoologi 36.A.2, p. 22); their formulae i.e. length in mm., breadth
in per cent of length (in brackets [parentheses]), and number of labial and true columellar teeth (separated by a colon) are
as follows:
13(60)18:14 (a rather worn paratype), 15(57)17:15 (holotype according to Schilder 1958, Arch. Mollusk. 87:172), 16(56)19:18
(paratype in coll. Schilder No. 7433).
As these shells never have been figured before, I think it useful to publish a photograph of the last-named paratype of 16mm
because a specimen from the Bonin Is. figured by Cate (1960, Veliger 3, pl. 1, fig. 5) is a much larger and broader shell, as
its formula is 29(64)23:24.
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