Coming to a charity shop near you

I tend to keep an eye on local charity shops, one never knows what will turn up. Just before Christmas Oxfam shops were stocking “craft kits – decorative shells” packaged by “The India Shop”. Unusually these were marked “Decorative Shells collected from the Seashores of South India by tsunami survivors” – nice to have even basic locality data, so as the price was a modest £2.99 and the cause was good I bought a packet without great expectations.

Most of the shells were common and readily identifiable; Umbonium vestarium, Cerithidea cingulata and valves of Andara granosa, with a single10mm eulimid, which has defied (and will probably continue to defy) identification. Of interest to me were a group of c.45 specimens of a species which I could not identify – 15-25mm high, white to tan in colour with a dark purple/brown apex and a small slit-like umbilicus (figure 1). The closest I could get was to place them in the Viviparidae, but that was about it. Like so many freshwater shells these fell in the gap between books on marine shells and books on land shells.

Then, fortuitously, Peter Topley exhibited a group of selfcollected Indian land and freshwater shells at the Conchological Society’s January meeting. Having seen that these included some very similar shells, I sent Peter a sample for identification. Back came the answer: these were Bellamya dissimilis, “a common freshwater species throughout the sub-continent”. These were of a genus and species new to my collection and, as I thought, in the Viviparidae. Since I have seen these craft packets in Oxfam shops in Devon, Surrey and Middlesex it seems likely that other members might have purchased some, and worth a note on the identity of this species.

figure 1: Bellamya dissimilis purchased from a charity shop. (photo: Peter Topley)