Page 2 February 1980 No. 25 NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES 
y Marie Sussman, who 
ided b 
ecb ape m her collection. 
1 was 
The month's display of shells was Dut idaae fro 
showed a selection of species of 
The speaker was Nick Katsaras, whose s 
to My Fingers." acgording ek tte 
does not steal shells. at it m 9 ; 
years of buying shells for his famous auctions get sacra mai : 
that he couldn't bear to part with. He NSS tae ait = ¢ 
Slide close-ups and comment. Most of the many eee) a1 teed we 
were Cones, and all were superb specimens of exception y nandsome 
BEESA RR Milton Werner, Recording Sec'y 
Pugh vk We cok 
REVIEW: COWRIES 
: : : G. Walls 1979. US eo ES Publica- 
second edition, revised by Jerry s 286 pp., profuse- 
tions, Inc., Box 427, Neptune, New Jersey 07753. 
ly illustrated with color plates. Approximately 5%" x 84", hard 
cover. Price $20.00. 
I was very pleased to see that there is now available a revised edi- 
tion of the original COWRIES by J. Taylor and J. Walls, 1975. The 
original edition has been out of print for several months and since 
Burgess's work, THE LIVING COWRIES (1970) has also been unavailable 
the need was pressing for a work on Cypraeidae which would be read- 
ily available for collectors. This new edition is essentially an 
update of the earlier book and includes species that have been named 
since the earlier work appeared: one will find photographs and ref- 
erences to such species as Cypraea lisetae Kilburn, 1975 (a species 
to be discussed in a Socinooniac issue of these NOTES), Cypraea 
maricola C. Cate, 1976, and Cypraea kingae Rehder and Wilson, 1975, 
references which are not readily avAtietic in a single work else- 
where. At a quick glance it appears that Walls has done a thorough 
job of research and every named species since 1975 (valid or not) 
is treated in the new edition -- with the exception of Cypraea 
cece Petuch, 1979, as this description appeared too late to be 
included. 
One notes that the name of Dr. John Taylor, of the British Museum 
of Natural History, does not appear on the cover of the second edi- 
tion, but he authors the first part of the book with an excellent 
section called "The Living Cowry." This first section gives us a 
general look at the living animals, their history, and uses by man. 
The second section of the book is authored by Walls and is called 
"Cowries and the Collector” and contains some useful information on 
keeping Cypraea in an aquarium as well as building and curating a 
study collection of these shells. The third section is one that 
collectors will find most useful and is entitled "Color Atlas of 
Cowries." The fourth section, by Walls and Warren E. Burgess, con- 
tains a most interesting and informative "Synopsis of Cowry Subspe- 
cies and Varieties" as well as a thorough "Synonymic Index." I 
found the "Synopsis" (which did not appear in the first edition) to 
be far superior to the "Alternative Cowry Classification" which was 
based largely on Schilder's works and which this reader found too 
cumbersome and pointless to have any practical value -- since I can 
see little or no point in dividing the Cypraea into any classifica- 
tion system more complex than that of genus and apeanes 
