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Mitra - mitra
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."
It should be the Malacological trend to consolidate nomenclature and not separate, and separation should be done only if the
characteristics of the new species or subspecies are constant in large series (not 16 shells) of shells, and peculiar to the
new subspecies only. This does not apply at all in the case of C. chinensis amiges and the situation of tagging a new name to
every ecological variation, is getting ridiculous. I am convinced that my article will not stop Mr. Cate from naming another
dozen new subspecies before giving up his malacological hobby, however, it is only fair, that if we have to read Cate's
inconclusive arguments in favor of his new subspecies, we should be permitted to express our own arguments against accepting
his new subspecies. Furthermore, it stimulates scientific thinking, and will show to Mr. Cate that we do not accept every
subspecies he dishes out from his conveyor belt.
In The Veliger, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 74 77, Crawford Cate made an attempt to restore the old subspecific name amiges to current
usage. It is unfortunate that he based his differentiating comparison on specimens from the Philippines only, and did not
take into account specimens of C. chinensis (which the Schilders call C. chinensis variolaria Lamarck, 1810) from Mauritius.
The morphological relationship, despite the greater distance from Philippines, is closer by far between variolaria
(Mauritius) and amiges (Philippines), then it is between C. chinensis, sensu stricto (Philippines) and amiges.
As Crawford Cate pointed out in his article, Melvill & Standen's specimen of amiges was a single, dead shell of unknown
locality. Melvill and Standen's contention that amiges could have come from the Philippines Archipelago was a mere
presumption and by no means zoogeographical reasoning, for the specimen could have just as well come from Mauritius. Once the
locality of a holotype of a species or subspecies is unknown, it is useless to guess where its origin might have been.
The Schilders in their nomenclatural system accept (4) races or subspecies of C. chinensis, which are as follows: C.
chinensis chinensis Gmelin, 1791, (32/61, 17:16). C. chinensis violacea Rous, 1905 (31/63, 15:15), C. chinensis variolaria
Lamarck, 1810 (32/64, 15.16), and C. chinensis sydneyensis Schilder & Schilder, 1938 (35/63, 15:14). The figures in brackets
signify the following: Length in mm., width as a % of length, mean number of labial teeth as reduced to a shell 25mm. in
length: mean number of columellar teeth also reduced (see Schilder, Zool. Anz. Bd. 92, H. 3/4, 1930). The Schilders'
statistical figures were obtained by personally examining 250 specimens of C. chinensis from different localities.
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