Page 4 January 1979 No. 238 NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES 
te of valid mollusk species. 
vailable, but there are species 
At the other extreme data is tae . raise Baber, ar dara 
maturing at less than one sp nigt sae which might not be apparent to 
ity of all species are small 
the peimase, The concentration of popular literature, shell shows 
and amateur collectors on a few families of larger shells tends to 
obscure the fact that Cowries, Cones, Volutes and other "prestige 
groups make up only a tiny fraction of the known species of mollusks, 
bathe 
BRarl H. Reed, Assistant Director 
Springfield (Mass.) Science Museum 
RUTH H. FAIR 
We were sorry to learn that Ruth Fair died on June 21, 1978, after 
months of illness. 
Many of our members are familiar with her publication THE MUREX 
BOOK, an illustrated catalogue of Recent Muricidae, published in 
1976 in Honolulu. 
Mrs. Fair had been a resident of Houston, Texas, for the past two 
years. She was a member of the American Malacological Union and of 
the Houston Conchological Society. 
Our sympathy is extended to her husband, Jim. 
the most conservative estima 

MEDICINE AND A MARINE INVERTEBRATE 
(Extracts from an article by Frederick C. Pearson III, associate pro- 
fessor of biology at Rhode Island College, in MARITIMES 22 (2) 4-6, 
May, 1978, published by the Graduate School of Oceanography, U4.) 
The horseshoe crab, Limulus PARP One 22s » has roamed the coastal waters 
of North America from Nova Scotia to Yucatan for some 200 million 
years. Although this animal has not evolved significantly during 
this period, it is found today in great abundance in its original 
territory and has outlived most of its contemporaries to earn the 
name -- "living fossil.” 
Each spring the horseshoe crabs migrate to the warm waters of bays 
and estuaries, and great numbers of pairs swim to the shore where 
the female excavates a nest in the sand, near the high water mark, 
for deposition of her small, spherical, pea-green eggs. The eggs 
are promptly fertilized by the male, the nest is covered with sand 
inca sae? incubated until the larvae are released on a subsequent 
Researchers have found the horseshoe crab t 
study certain aspects of the nervous and gisoulateaseretebece aoe 
recently they have found that an extract of horseshoe crab blood 
cells can be used to detect extremely small quantities of endotoxins, 
one of the major components of gram-negative bacterial cell walls. 
When even very small amounts of endotoxin enter the blood stream 
