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Raw material Ed deVaul found a Conus spiceri and two Harpa amouretta off Makua at 80' and Al Kekoa has brought up six more C. tessellata from 60-70 feet in Moanalua Bay over four weekends.
The South China Sea is a mecca for shell collectors, with many interesting shells from that area coming into our hands through Formosan fishermen and shell dealers.
We have received such rare sea shells as Erosaria guttata (Gmelin), Schilderia hirasei (Roberts), S. teramachii (Kuroda), S. langfordi (Kuroda) and Gratiadusta hungerfordi (Sowerby). Recently we got a lovely new cowry from the South China Sea. Schilderia sakuraii, described by Habe in the Bulletin of the Biogeographical Society of Japan, vol. 24, no. 10, pp. 67-69. The nearest ally is S. hirasei, but it is larger in size and has paler coloration than our new species. We have examined four specimens of S. sakuraii.
The shell is thick and heavy with rounded humped back. Dorsal surface is covered with brown clouds of densely set transverse lines and bars divided into two parts by the white line of the mantle.
In "The Living sea shells" describing Cypraea asellus, Dr. C. M. (Pat) Burgess comments: "This strikingly different small species stands out in any company. The alternating jet black and pure white dorsal bands are unmistakable." We agree with Dr. Pat that this is a beautiful shell.
Shown in the above picture are three highly unusual specimens of this small sea shell along with a standard shell (left specimen). Then there is one specimen with a solid black dorsum. Another has four black bands instead of the normal three. And at right is a brown rather than jet black shell and also with an odd pattern. These shells are all from the private collection of Iain Gower and were live collected by him in the waters of Guadalcanal.
In speaking of the rarity of these shells, Gower tells us they were selected from over twenty-five thousand specimens and were the only ones found of each type. Gower is a well known shell dealer who lives at Guadalcanal, British Solomon Islands.
Erronea barclayi has been established by Reeve in 1857 by describing an unique shell said to come from Diego Garcia, Chagos Is.; this holotype is preserved in coll. Saul in Cambridge, England (see Schilder 1932, Zoolog. Anzeiger 100:171).
The following hundred years no second specimen has been discovered, though in many collections other sea shell species erroneously have been labeled E. barclayi.
Raw material The differences in dorsal markings recall those between the East Australian Erronea subviridis and its West Australian representative E. dorsalis, the grey color and the well defined dorsal blotch of L. alfredensis also recall Bistolida stolida brevidentata. The combination of characters in size, solidity, color, and markings prove L. alfredensis to be a distinct species, as it is sympatric with L. edentula in many localities in South Africa.
The splintering of the South African Luponia and Cypraea into many sympatric species agrees with that of Triviella in the same area, and of Notocypraea along the south coast of Australia: both regions constitute the limit of distribution of sea shells on account of the lower temperature of the sea.
During a short shelling holiday on the coast of Kenya, I collected two specimens of Cypraea marginalis, quoted as the rarest and most sought after cowry of the around 40-odd species occurring along the East African coast (C. C. Woltz & D. B. Belcher: in "Collecting sea shells in Dar-es-Salaam").
The two specimens pictured [left], one in dorsal, the other in ventral view, were found in the shallow lagoon off Diani Beach, about 20 miles south of Mombasa, and had been lying in a sandy depression of the otherwise weed-covered bottom a few feet below low tide level, together with coral rubble and other shells that had apparently been washed into it
Though picked up dead, both specimens looked quite fresh. One is in absolutely perfect condition, the other only slightly dull along the dorsal line, but sides and base retain their full natural gloss. They measure 30 x 20 and 29 x 18mm, respectively, with 22 and 23 labial teeth and a similar number on the columellar side Coloring is a very light brown with numerous white, and fewer - but more conspicuous - brown spots, the latter filled in the center with bluish-white. The strongly pitted margins and flat base are whitish with a very delicate hint of lilac, spotted with a few darker lilac streaks and dots. The lucky date was 9th July, 1966. Since then I have made a repeat trip in February of this year (1969), but try as I might, I could not even pinpoint the exact spot in the lagoon again, let alone find more of this pretty, and evidently quite rare cowry shell.
In the January 1962 issue of the Philippine Shell News, page 2, I illustrated and attempted to give specific characters and distribution of these four sea shells. This brief presentation, although not therein stated, was based on careful observation of more than 1,000 C. teres, 120 C. rashleighana, 10 C. subteres and 35 specimens of the admittedly then not completely documented C. latior.
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