Page 80 THE VELIGER Vol. 6; No. 2 The Cypraea martini of SCHEPMAN, 1907 (Mollusca Gastropoda) BY CRAWFORD N. CATE Conchological Club of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90007 (Plate 15; 4 Text figures; 1 Map) Our knowledge of some of the rarer cowries is limited, and identification is made difficult by the lack of photographs to complement the original descriptions of many of these species. The recent discovery of a freshly dead ex pisce specimen of Cypraea (Notadusta) martini Schepman, 1907 (see Plate 15, figs. 2a and 2b) has caused me to search for other records of this rare species ; it is the purpose of this paper to collate all the available information, to publish what may be the first field report of a recently collected specimen, and to provide photographs of it and other comparable shells. Relatively litue has been known about Cypraea martini. It has been represented by only ten recorded specimens, eight of which, from the Pleistocene of northwest Celebes, were preserved in the museums at Leiden and Amsterdam. Only two Recent specimens have been recorded, one from the New Hebrides in the Schilder Collection (see Plate 15, figs. 4a and 4b) and one in the Shuttleworth Collection in the museum at Bern, Switzerland, with the locality label "Philippines" This latter specimen was misidentified as Cypraea bee kit Gaskoin, 1836, but has been definitely substantiated as C. martini by Dr. F. A. Schilder, who has examined it several times. This, then, was the status of Cypraea martini when I received a specimen for identification no examples were known outside of Europe ; most were fossil shells ; the type figure was in a foreign journal (Schepman, 1907) not readily available to most collectors of Cypraea, and the only other illustration known to me was that of Allan, 1956, which is a rather exaggerated drawing that does not provide an adequate guide for identification. The specimen on which my study is based (see Plate 15, figs. 2a and 2b) was collected during a phase of the Palawan Expedition in April 1962 that centered in the area of the Monpog sea passage off southern Luzon --more precisely, in the vicinity of Pulo Island, northeast of the large island of Marinduque and west of Luzon's Bondoc Peninsula (see map) In from one to five fathoms of water in this area, where the substrate varied from rock to coral, spearfishermen collected a specimen of fish known only as a member of the Grouper genus Plectropomus (family Serranidae). Subsequent examination of the stomach contents revealed a small brown cowrie of unknown identity. No other similar specimens were collected during the trip, nor is it known in any of the Philippine collections. Mr. Fernando G. Dayrit sent it to me for identification, and has furnished the information relating to its discovery. There is another exceedingly rare cowrie, Cypraea fultoni Sowerby, 1903, an ex pisce form whose predator fish, known to me simply as a Musselcracker, is a migratory species seen only for a short time each year off the coast of South Africa. Since it is not known where the Musselcracker travels during the remainder of the year, it is impossible to ascertain an exact locality where C. fultoni lives. With this analogy in mind, I inquired into the living habits of the Grouper family. Mr. John E. Fitch, Research Director of the California Department of Fish and Game, informed me that his department has studied the behavior of certain species of Grouper, applying marking tags and checking the movements of those particular species; the results of the study showed that these fish normally live within a general area of no more than a square mile, not moving about as do the Mussel-crackers of South Africa. The non-migratory characteristic seems to be typical of all the species of Grouper studied ; therefore it can probably be assumed to be true in this instance also. The supposed habits of the fish from whose stomach the C. martini was taken would seem to establish the Pulo Island vicinity as a reasonably reliable locality record for this mollusk; further, the small size of this shell (approximately 15 mm in length) suggests the possibility that if the mollusk had been ingested more than a few hours (and, consequently, some miles away) before the fish was caught, normal digestive