NEW YORK SHELL CLUB NOTES No. 267 
December 1980 Page 5 
ive audiandina I have in captivity, brought back in August from 
oes e Appalachicola River in Gadsden County, Florida, is quite 
we and has grown appreciably, living only on decaying vegeta- 
tion and the minute fungi that occurs in rotting wood. Proof of 
his having eaten is shown by deposits of fecal matter. I also 
feed him Gerber'’s Baby Food, smeared thinly on the sides of his 
housing. He will not eat lettuce or other fresh greens. Perhaps 
he would like to have some snails for hi i 
is da 
have none to offer him. tetany fare, but I 
Snails can go for long periods without eating, but must have 
moisture to Survive. Most of the time he remains dormant, but 
when cool weather causes moisture to condense in the top of the 
globe wherein he is housed, or when sprinkled with water, he be- 
comes quite active...With his long neck stretched out and waving 
back and forth in a searching manner, he does appear quite men- 
acing (to other snails, that is). 
CYPRAEA, PORTERET Cate, 1966 
Robert H. Janowsky 
I must confess that I have had for several years a deep-seated dis- 
like for this rather attractive and extremely rare species. I was 
never sure as to why this was until I was going through my slides 
to prepare a talk on rare Cypraea and came across a slide of a par- 
ticular specimen of Cypraea porteri and had one of those all too 
familiar moments of revelation: 
One morning several years ago our telephone rang at about one o'clock. 
Since I am a perfect gentleman about such matters, I awakened my 
wife, Dorothy, and allowed her to take the call. She was gone for 
a few minutes, during which time I managed to fall asleep. She re- 
turned and I half awoke when she said that she had just bought a 
Cypraea porteri. I mumbled some suitable acknowledgment, such as, 
"That's nice, dear," and went back to sleep .... for about two min- 
utes. By the time my realization of what she had said sank into my 
dormant brain she was sound asleep, and I was left to spend a rest- 
less night mulling the whole thing over. 
I awakened her at a decent hour (5:00 am is, after all, as decent as 
any other hour that I can think of) and reviewed the happenings of 
several hours before. The telephone call was from the secretary of 
one of our regular suppliers from Taiwan. He was calling to let us 
know that a specimen of Cypraea porteri had just been collected by a 
fishing trawler and that he could get it for us if we wanted it. I 
like to think that he had forgotten that there is a time difference 
of almost twelve hours between Brooklyn and Kaohsuing, but I more 
suspect that he was anxious to be the first one to make a sizable 
profit on the shell. Needless to Say, we wanted the shell and that 
morning cabled to confirm our interest. Alas, the story does not 
have a happy ending: The specimen arrived a few days later and 
proved imperfect, with an obvious growth scar above one margin. 
I must admit that I was quite tempted to purchase the shell abel his 
the flaw, but from both an economic and aesthetic point of view ai 
have never been able to recommend to any of my clients a shell tha 
is imperfect to so great a degree; and I returned it to Taiwan. 
Several months later a fellow shell dealer was visiting us and he 
