THE COLOURS OF COWRIES 357 
of which there is both a long and a short form, the bands 
tend to become very indistinct; and it may be suggested 
that the short form is not far removed from the ancestral 
type of the beautiful orange cowry, which is one of the few 
uniformly coloured species ; such uniformly coloured forms 
indicating, as already said, one line of specialisation. 
Among the spotted cowries several types are noticeable. 
Firstly, we have species in which the back of the shell is 
simply spotted with black or brown, among them being the 
tiger cowry (C. figris), the panther cowry (C. pantherina), 
and the much smaller lynx cowry (C. lynx). As all these 
have a comparatively short and wide shell, they indicate 
an advanced type. Next we have white-spotted cowries, 
such as the false Argus (C. cervus), the lesser false Argus, 
and the fallow-deer cowry; and as the two former are 
long-shaped, while the latter is comparatively short, they 
seem to indicate a medium stage of evolution. 
From the black- and brown-spotted forms seem to have 
originated the group represented by the map and nutmeg 
cowries (C. mappa and arabica), in which the spots are 
retained along the margins of the back of the shell, the 
central area of which is more or less finely reticulated or 
vermiculated, the map cowry taking its name from the width 
and sinuosity of the line between the mantle-lobes. In the 
typical nutmeg cowry the reticulations are very nutmeg-like, 
but in other specimens more or less distinct pale spots are 
dotted all over the central area, till in the variety Azstrio 
the spots are the dominant feature, being only separated by 
these lines so as to form a kind of network, or honeycomb 
arrangement. Perhaps the cullender cowry may be regarded 
as an offshoot of this type. 
But another modification may apparently also be traced to 
the avabica-mappa stock, the members of which are inter- 
