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Puka necklace
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.
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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