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Natural body jewelry
Our most exciting and productive trip so far began on June 11, 1963, when my friend Mary Hartman and I left Fort Myers bright
and early (5:45 am.) for four days in Marathon. We arrived at our regular headquarters, The Ranch House Motel, about 10:30
and were warmly greeted by our friends and hosts, Chuck and Sylvia Soumar, who filled us in on the latest shelling news.
Mary and I quickly changed to our swim suits, took our snorkels and started out for our familiar places where we found the
usual live Strombus gigas (all juveniles), Strombus raninus, Fasciolaria tulipa, Astraea longispina, brevispina and
americana, Pinna carnea, Nerita peloronta, versicolor and tessellata to name a few. Some of the new species for us this time
were one Prunum carneum so bright and pretty, one lovely pink Tegula, one Conus spurius atlanticus and many beautiful little
Neritina virginea which fascinated us with their many different patterns.
This was our first time to use snorkels and they opened up a new world for us. The water was beautifully clear and the
gorgonians, plume grasses, sea whips, sponges, coral, brilliantly colored tropical fish, huge sea urchins some with jet
black bodies and spines 6 to 8 inches long, others with scarlet red bodies and black spines or red bodies and red spines
kept us entranced so that we sometimes forgot to look for shells.
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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