Vol.37 No.1 April 2007
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VOL.37 z NO.1 z APRIL 2007 PALLIDULA Page 2 COVER PAGE Littorina saxatilis, Olivi, 1792 Collected on rocks in inter-tidal pools, seaward side of Shell Island, near Harlech, North Wales. Collectors: Simon and Gabrielle Aiken, 9/2006. Size: 11–14 mm. Photo courtesy of Simon’s Specimen Shells Ltd. PALLIDULA Page 3 A PROPHETIC PAINTING by S. Peter Dance Occasionally, I try my very amateur hand at a painting in watercolours, selecting a subject not too demanding, not too large, not too intricate. In my more ambitious moments I choose to paint shells, not the easiest of subjects to portray accurately. Rashly, perhaps, I had promised to do a painting of an Alphabet Cone, Conus spurius, for my friend Harlan E. Wittkopf of Algona, Iowa. For Harlan no object is more desirable than the Alphabet Cone, so called because its markings often resemble letters of the alphabet. Mischievously, I decided to add some embellishments of my own to the natural pattern of the shell I had chosen as my subject. Eventually, the initials ‘H’, ‘E’, and ‘W’ featured in my hastily executed sketch of Harlan’s favourite shell. Tongue in cheek, I dashed it off to him. Harlan thanked me effusively, delighted that his favourite shell had been personalised. From then on he scrutinised closely the markings of each one he found. In truth, using a little imagination, it is not difficult to find letters on this cone shell, but it is a different matter when you are looking for specific combinations of letters. Harlan, it may be correct to assume, was looking for a specific Watercolour sketch of an imagined combination - and he found it! One evening, he phoned to say he Alphabet Cone (Conus spurius Gmelin) bearing the initials H, E and had picked up an Alphabet Cone W (and the name of the artist). on a beach at Sanibel Island, his happy hunting ground for his favourite shell, on the last day of the year 2005, marked with his initials! A photo of it followed. As if this was not enough, he phoned some weeks later to say he had found another. On one of them, moreover, he had picked out the number ‘47’ - and he was born in 1947! It began to look as though Alphabet Cones marked with his initials could be commonplace at Sanibel, but I knew they weren’t. I suspected, too, that similar combinations of letters and numbers would be less likely to reveal themselves to someone with a different set of initials and a different birth date. Perhaps Harlan’s motto is ‘Seek and ye shall find’. Having found two examples of the cone marked with his initials it Three Alphabet Cones from Sanibel would seem that Harlan’s cup was full to overflowing, but there was Island, collected and photographed more to come. Some of his many acquaintances hold influential by Harlan E. Wittkopf (born 1947). Two display his initials; one of positions in American organisations, these is also marked ‘47’. among them someone associated with the United States Postal Service, someone happy to do Harlan a favour. In no time at all he had helped to organise the authorisation and design of an official 39 cents postage stamp, showing a photo of three Alphabet Cones! It was issued in June 2006. Using a lens, it is just possible to make out, on two of the cones, the letters ‘H’, ‘E’, and ‘W’. By a curious chain of circumstances, therefore, my sketchy drawing has led to the creation Postage stamp with a design of another, much smaller, picture that could take Harlan’s initials to the based on Harlan’s photo, issued by the US Postal Service in June limits of the known world. Had I been able to predict the outcome, I 2006 - a unique contribution to may have sent him a more carefully executed drawing of an Alphabet conchological philately. Cone, one displaying a different set of initials! PALLIDULA Page 4 SHELL COLLECTING IN HALKIDIKI, GREECE by Carl and Craig Ruscoe In May 2006 my brother, Craig and I spent 2 weeks in Halkidiki, Greece collecting shells. In a recent edition of the Pallidula I read a very good article on collecting shells in the Athens area written by Linda Young. There was a very extensive list of species found, including many interesting micro shells. This inspired us to try out Greece for ourselves. We planned to meet up with a friend and fellow collector, Kyriakos, who lives in Thesaloniki. To our frustration we found out only after booking that he was doing his national service for 12 months and we would have to go it alone. We spent a very hard 2 weeks collecting. We walked for 150km and drove 1500km in 2 weeks and in total we sampled 27 beaches; there was no respite. The hard work paid off and we collected some lovely shells. I would like to tell you about our trip. The Growler, our friend, came on time to take us to the airport. Our flight took only 3 hours but we had to wait for an hour to collect our luggage because a case had got stuck somewhere and had jammed the whole system. Not knowing this, Craig and I offered to help with the unloading; our offer was declined. After an unnecessarily long coach journey, we arrived at our apartment at 4am. Carl with the worlds biggest pineapple !!! We were up at 8am the next morning eager to start collecting. After a quick visit to the local supermarket we started collecting on a short-turfed calcareous slope just a stone’s throw away from the apartments. We found about 8 interesting species of land snails and made our way to the local beach about half a mile away. At first the beach here looked devoid of shells. The beach mostly consisted of coarse sand with a couple of lines of shingle. We knew that we would have to walk to the inter-tidal rocks at the end of the bay, even here though it was a struggle to find shells. I searched in the fine grit with my nose a few millimetres from the floor and found some beautiful bright orange specimens of Truncatella subcylindrica. I was delighted. I had never seen this species with any real colour before. Craig made himself useful searching on the rocks for living Molluscs. A good variety of gastropods could be found on the rocks, mostly complete with resident hermit crab. Amongst Craig’s finds were Clanculus cruciatus, Monodonta articulata and Epitonium lamellosum. We then climbed up in to the pine forest overlooking the beach in an attempt to find more land snails. As I expected, there were no snails living in the forest. The greedy pines had drunk all the water and eaten all the nutrients from the soil. On our way back to the apartments we spotted locusts, huge centipedes and a large snake close to where we had collected that morning. We could have been fried! We set off on Wednesday quite pleased with our first day’s catch. We proceeded down to the local beach and headed south this time. Amongst more rocks we found many micro shells including Turrids, Rissoids and Nassarius. We walked on for about 1km and found our first real shell sand. I scraped up a bag full to process later. In the shell sand there was a good variety of micros and more than 50 specimens of a beautiful Cyclope species with a lovely speckled pattern, a rather unusual member of the family Nassariidae. We made our way back to the Themelis apartments after walking up and down all day, and Craig, whose lifestyle leaves a lot to be desired, nearly passed out with exhaustion! We had a lot of cleaning to do that evening but I still managed to put some more time into collecting land snails and found some Ceciloides, a blind, subterranean snail rarely seen alive! We then had our evening meal at a nice restaurant called the Bella Venezia. The food here is very good value and the service is excellent. The added bonus was that customers staying at the Themelis were given 10% discount cards for the Bella Venezia. Craig thought he could get away with giving them 10 cards and no money, it just didn’t wash! We had to be at reception early the next morning to pick up our hire car. While we were waiting, during a considerable delay, I searched for more land snails on the local slope. I managed to find 12 PALLIDULA Page 5 specimens of Truncatella cylindrica. This is a tiny member of the family Vertiginidae and quite uncommon. At less than 2mm long it is quite difficult to find. I put my eyes back in their sockets and went to reception where the Europcar driver had arrived. The driver insisted that we leave a deposit of 350 Euros. Craig almost exploded, insisting that no deposit was agreed when booking. The driver called for reinforcements and after 15 minutes of negotiations as they seemed to pluck figures out of the air we came to a compromise “100 Euros, you pay me now”. We finally got on the road in our strange sinistral car. We stopped at Kallithea to change money and then drove on South down the East coast of the peninsula. We stopped at a place called Solina. The beach here was not bad. Craig found a beautiful patterned specimen of Glycymeris insubrica and I found a small internal shell of a Sea Hare, Aplysia, the first we had collected.