THE COWRIES. VENUS SHELLS - FAMILY CYPRAEIDAE Shell solid, oval, or pear-shaped, ventricose, highly polished and handsomely coloured; spire covered by body whorl in adults; aperture long, narrow, ending in two short canals, both lips toothed; operculum wanting; animal large, highly coloured; mantle two-lobed, reflected over the shell, its surface warty, variously coloured; foot large, simple, oblong, with marginal folds; usually coloured; siphon broad, short, often fringed; head cylindrical, blunt, with long tentacles bearing eyes; rad ula long, well developed; jaw horny.
A large family of shy, slow-moving mollusks in warm seas, feeding on coral polyps. The shells are among the most beautiful and most highly prized. 1 t is believed by children in many lands that the sound of their native sea is imprisoned in these shells.
Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polished lip to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abode And murmurs as the ocean mumurs there.
—Walter Savage Landor.
Genus CYPRIEA, Linn.
Characters of the family. A large genus of good-sized mollusks, highly coloured and richly ornamented in body and shell. Weinkauff describes 189 living and 97 fossil species.
Three cowries live on our Florida coast, another belongs to Southern California. From these northern representatives of a tropical genus we \get but a faint notion of the wonderful richness of colour and pattern to be seen in the nearly two hundred distinct species and their varietal forms which the ardent collector assem bles from tropical and sub-tropical coasts. The handsomest shell is not so handsome as the living animal that inhabits it, engulfing the shell completely as it glides along in mantle folds 124 The Cowries. Venus Shells tufted with brilliantly coloured, branching, coral-like outgrowths, and numerous spots of contrasting hues. Beneath is the thick, richly coloured foot on which the creature glides with dignity and grace over the rocks, below the level of the lowest tide.
"What daring is exhibited," we naturally exclaim, "by this proud aristocrat of the mollusk world, which exposes itself to countless dangers by such superlative ornamentation! How much wiser is the humble periwinkle of colder coasts, which puts on colours to match the slimy mud it lives in." Remember that tropical shores are unlike ours, even as tropical birds and flowers and fruits make ours seem tame and colourless. The traveller who has looked through the glass bottom of a Bermuda or a Santa Catalina boat, or gazed through a water glass on the painted fish and the brilliant coral groves in the harbour of Nassau needs no hint from me of the riot of colour, and wealth of ornamentation lavished by nature upon the sea beaches where the coral polyps, the gorgonias and the cowries flourish. The poet Percival must have looked upon that en chanting scene or he could not have written, in "The Coral Grove" The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift, And pearl shells spangle the flinty snow; From coral reefs the sea plants lift Their heads where the tides, and billows flow.
There, with a light and easy motion, The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea, And the purple and scarlet tufts of ocean Are bending like corn on the upland lea; And life in rare and beautiful forms Is sporting amid those bowers of stone, And is safe when the wrathful spirit of storms Has made the top of the waves his own.
The cowries exhibit protective coloration just as the gorgeous tropic birds do in the blossoming silvas.
The problem of the cowry shell's development has always puzzled conchologists, Few scientific observers have had any evidence to submit, so speculation has helped on the controversial discussion. Because a series of shells of any well-known species shows considerable difference in size, some argued that the mollusk 125 The Cowries. Venus Shells dissolves its shell when it becomes too tight a fit, and secretes a new one of larger size.