The Charity Cowrie

One of the advantages of having Mrs MW working in one of the two local charity shops is that she sometimes spots an item which might be of interest to me.

The other day, amongst a pile of shells many of which might have come from the Golspie beach, she found this 2.5" long cowrie, priced at £1. I have no need for any more cowries - I have the two beautiful tiger cowries from the beaches near Mombasa - link here - and a couple of the tiny, delicate Scottish cowries - but this one seemed so lost and unloved amongst the cockles and scallops that I succumbed.

I found its identity very quickly as it's an Indo-Pacific species which Kit Metcalf described in his magnificent study of East African cowries  - link here. The nomenclature has changed since his time, so it's now either Leporicypraea mappa or Leporicypraea geographica, both known as the map cowrie. According to Kit Metcalf, the East African mappa he pictured is very rare indeed but which one this is is impossible to verify as mappa has numerous subspecies which are very similar.

While I would love to know which species mine is - this goes back to my feeble desire to have been a world expert on one thing, and it would have been wonderful if my subject had been cowries - neither its name nor its value is of any huge importance. I'm glad I have it simply because it's a very pretty cowrie.