Milne-Edwards Cone

The first mention of this shell dates from the middle of the 18th century and refers to France , in particular, to the catalog of goods for 1749 by a certain merchant Gersint. In it, he described the shell of this cone as "one of the extremely rare." Madame de Gandeville bought the sink, becoming the first owner of this species among collectors. Subsequently, the French naturalist Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville (Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville; 1680-1765), who traveled to Europe in search of new and rare shells of mollusks and compiled detailed descriptions of the most famous collections of that time, placed an engraving of this shell in his " Conchology ”, published in Paris in 1780 ^[8] . In his book, d'Argenville called the shell a “pyramidal textile cone” ^[6] .

At the end of the 19th century, when laying an underwater cable off the coast of India, 125 miles west and southwest of Bombay, American naturalist John Kirk Townsend (1809-1851) discovered a shell of this species that somehow got on the cable. Soon he found two more specimens of the species, one of which, the only one found alive at that time, he transferred to the British conchologist Melville (James Cosmo Melvill; 1845-1929). The latter, in collaboration with another British conchologist, Steenden, published a description of a conch called Conus clytospira in 1899 in the London Annals of Natural History. In fact, the discovery of the species essentially belongs to the Frenchman Jousseau, who five years earlier published in the Bulletin of the French Zoological Society a description of the cone obtained off the coast of Aden and named it Conus milneedwardsii . This name is valid according to the rules of zoological nomenclature ^[6] .

The Latin species name was given in honor of Henri Milne-Edwards ( French Henri Milne-Edwards , 1800-1885) - a famous French zoologist and naturalist, a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences since 1838 ^[9] .

The shell is rather large, with a length of 46 to 174 mm ^{[3] [6]} . The shell has a fusiform shape with 10-12 revolutions separated by a shallow seam. The last revolution is about 2/3 of the entire height of the shell. The mouth is slit-shaped. The shell color is bright, consists of a contrasting pattern of brown and maroon spots and lines on a creamy white background. The spots form two broad bands surrounding the last revolution of the shell. Thin lines in the color of the shell create a pattern of triangular figures arranged in a cascade ^[3] .

The clam leg is white, dotted with brown spots, with a dotted black line along the edge. At the edges of the foot, brown spots are usually larger and are closer to each other. The tentacle is white. The siphon is white in color, covered with brown dots (with the exception of the distal zone), characterized by a weakly pronounced dark ring located at a distance of 1/4 of the length from the end ^{[10] [11]} .

The species is distributed from Madagascar ^[12] and along the African coast from Kwazulu-Natal ( South Africa ), South Africa , off the coast of East Africa in the territory from the Strait of Mozambique to the Gulf of Aden and further to the Red Sea ; off the west coast of India starting from Pakistan and including the north coast of Sri Lanka ; near the islands of Reunion and Mauritius , as well as in the Sea of ​​China ^[3] .

It lives at depths from 50 to 180 m ^[11] . The subspecies lemuriensis prefers to settle on sandy soils at a depth of 50-60 m. A predator kills its prey with poison, which is injected into the victim's body with the help of a harpoon-like radula tooth. The mollusk perceives nearby prey in a chemical way using osfradia .

At present, 4 valid geographically isolated subspecies are distinguished in the species ^{[2] [13]} .

The nominative subspecies Conus milneedwardsii milneedwardsii Jousseaume, 1894 is found off the coast of East Africa from the Strait of Mozambique to the Gulf of Aden . The largest subspecies. Sink from 80 to 174 mm in height ^[6] .

A subspecies of Conus milneedwardsii clytospira Melvill & Standen, 1899 is found off the west coast of India from Pakistan and including the north coast of Sri Lanka . The subspecies is distinguished by a smaller shell size (from 65 to 110 mm) and two pronounced transverse stripes of pink color that intersect the last revolution of the mollusk shell ^[6] .

The subspecies Conus milneedwardsi lemuriensis Wils & Delsaerdt, 1989 lives on the islands of Reunion and Mauritius . The shape of the shell practically does not differ from the nominative subspecies, with the exception of a relatively wider last revolution. The average height of the shell is about 80 mm ^[6] .

A subspecies of Conus milneedwardsi eduardi Delsaerdt, 1997 is found in the Red Sea. It was originally described as an independent species Conus eduardi ^[14] .

Previously, the subspecies included the subspecies Conus milneedwardsii kawamurai ^[15] Habe, 1962, which lives in South Japan off the Ryukyu Islands . Currently, it is considered as an independent species of Conus kawamurai ^[16] .

The Miln-Edwards cone can be outwardly confused with the Bengal cone Conus bengalensis (Okutani, 1968), common in the Bay of Bengal , the Andaman Sea , off the coast of Burma and Thailand . The shell of the latter usually differs in a narrower last turn and not as high curl ^[6] .

The Glory Cone of India is a popular collectible among mollusk shell collectors ^{[6] [4]} .

• Victor Ershov. Cone Glory to India. Conus milneedwardsii Jousseaume, 1894 (neopr.) . shellclub.ru. Date of treatment October 12, 2016.