

NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES No. 255 October 1979 Page 1 
The NEW YORK SHELL CLUB meets th 
September through June, in Hy Senn peed) Beasarmie®, epoh: maths 
ROOM 426, AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 
NEXT MEETING: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1979, at 2:00 pm 
PROGRAM: "RARE SHELLS OF THE WORLD" by William E. Old 
“AMU CONVENTION 1979 " by W.Old and M.Werner 

CONTENTS Page 
Shelling in the Maldives (Part II) R. Plotkin 1 
REVIEW: Los Urocoptidae de Cuba, by 
M. L. Jaume and A. de la Torre Morris K. Jacobson 2 
Announcement: Shell Auction 4 
Collecting Mollusks for the Aquaria Dorothy Raeihle 5 
Cypraea langfordi Kuroda, 1938 Robert H. Janowsky 6 
Obituary: Mary Weiss t 

SHELLING IN THE MALDIVES (Part II) 
R. Plotkin 
(Concluding the letter of April 10th, 1979 from Dr. Ronald Plotkin 
of Johannesburg, South Africa, to Dottie and Bob Janowsky.) 
As far as cones were concerned, I was surprised at the great number 
of Conus zonatus around the islands, being offered by fishermen for 
as TittIe"as $1 apiece. I even found a couple myself in shallow 
water. Most of these were in pretty good condition. The next sur- 
prise was from a shell that the local people call the Maldive cone. 
This is quite different from ¢G. maldivus Hwass, which is the Indian 
Ocean equivalent of CG. generalis Linné. This shell was indeed ex- 
tremely common, there being literally thousands of them all over the 
Place. This in fact is the shell that has lately been argued about 
as CO. pramparti*. The locals are adamant that it comes only from 
the Maldive Islands, but of course one knows better. I myself col- 
lected a large specimen to the south of Mauritius some years ago, 
and at the time thought that I had found a C. barthelemyi of a very 
large size (90mm), and in surprisingly shallow water. Most of the 
senthesenyt come from deep water off Flic-en-Flac. I showed the 
Specimen to Helene Boswell, and she thought that it was a geronto- 
logical gubernator. I personally thought that if it was going to 
be a gerontological specimen, it would more likely be a striatus. I 
have been interested to see subsequently that there is now argument 
about whether these two cones are not in fact the same species. 
There are dozens of little general dealers shops and all of them 
sell shells, and there are an equal number of curio shops who also 
sell seashells, but there was very little being offered in all these 
various shops that was of any particular interest -- thousands and 
thousands of the same common species. Shells cost a dollar apiece, 
irrespective of the fact that there may be two thousand Cypraea lynx 
in the shop, each one is worth one dollar. Ovula ovum sells at ae 
to eight dollars a time, probably because they catch the average 


