NEW YORK SHELL CLUB Norgs 
Page 6 October 1978 No. 245 
CYPRAEA LEUCODON Broderip, 1828 
Robert Janowsky 
istory have stirred 
Very few shells in all the world throughout his 
that mae inerion and stimulated the oe a igre alae bame 7 
a deri 1828. oo 50 
SE ee ree s there ee the category “rarest mollusc" 
of Worl ecords”™ an here 
you will find this shell. Of course there are many shells whose 
rarity exceeds that of the "Great-spotted Cowery" but for some rea- 
son it is this shell that has caught the public's fancy. One can 
not even calculate the number of non-collectors who aged reported 
finding shells “just like the one in the Guiness Book" in Grandma's 
collection or in a dusty shop in Florida. These specimens turn out 
to be almost any other species of Cypraea, with C. tigris Linne be- 
ing a leading contender for the honors. Not so the illustrated 
specimen -- the genuine article -- the See hapa. is the 
first live-taken specimen of Cypraea leucodon a ave ever seen 
and, to the best of my knowledge, the first lLive-collected specimen 
in this country. 
This specimen was collected in April, 1978 from water approximately 
40 to 50 fathoms in depth off Punta Engano, off Mactan Island, the 
Philippines, in the same mesh nets that have yielded sg treasures 
as Cypraea valentia Perry, Cypraea guttata Gmelin, an onus gloria- 
maris Chemnitz. In the year and a half that this technique for 
shelling has been in operation there have been many reports of C. 
leucodon being collected. I am quite sure of at least four other 
shells being taken and would approximate at this point that a dozen 
or less specimens have been found from this area. For a great many 
years the shell was known only from a single specimen housed in the 
British Museum; it is this specimen that is illustrated in C. M. 
Burgess's "The Living Coweries," plate 23, fig. A and A1. A second 
specimen was later discovered in the Museum of Comparative Zoology's 
collection in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A third specimen was col- 
lected a few years ago in the Philippines, purchased by Mr. John 
duPont, and is now housed at the Delaware Museum of Natural History. 
This specimen was the only one I had ever seen previous to the one 
illustrated here. From what I have seen of the Delaware specimen 
and from what I can discern from photographs of the London and Cam- 
bridge specimens, I am forced to conclude that these three shells 
were all collected in dead condition, as all lack the luster and 
high gloss of a live-collected Cypraea. 
In his aforementioned monograph, Burgess states: "Cypraea lLeucodon 
is a distinct and spectacular Buca ch as the ‘i ons show; 
and no further description seems necessary." Perhaps he is right, 
but at the risk of "writing the unnecessary" I would like to de- 
scribe this specimen to you in some detail since an adequate de- 
scription of this rare shell is not to be found anywhere else where 
a collector might easily find it. It is ironic that so rare a shell 
1s so cavalierly treated by all the recent workers in Cypraea. 
Burgess treats it as above, Taylor and Walls in their Wowries" 
dismiss it witha five line description. Joyce Allan devotes two 
paragraphs to the species but gives only the broadest description 
in "Cowry Shells of World Seas" and even Schilder and Schilder in 
their "Prodrome of a Monograph of Livi i 
noncommittal about deterle ian. niving Cybpeeteaeayen. a 4 

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