Miters, collectors forgotten seashells

This article is not a scientific one. It is an amateur work and is exclusively built with my collection material. It is probable, if not sure, that the Miters specialists will find some errors.

For instance, the aim is not to review all the living Miters nor to study them. This is not my intend. I only am a collector and I prefer to let this duty to the specialists. If my choice is to write this article, it is because I love this beautiful shells family, and my aim is to share this passion with other collectors.

For an easiest pictures understanding you can find hereby the different abbreviations for the sub families of the genus Mitridae :

It is quite difficult to speak about Miters. Despite they form a very great family, they are widely neglected by the collectors who, when diving for shelling will pick up cowries, cones, and other volutes, but will neglect a miter. Why? For two main reasons. Fist, because despite the great works of Mrs H. TURNER, W.O. CERNOHORSKY and nowadays by Mr. GUILLOT de SUDUIRAUT, there is only little written publication about miters. Secondly, as they are few miters collectors, their estimated value is quite unknown. When reading the dealer's list you will sea that, while the most popular families are very widely proposed, the Miters offer is very poor. It is comprehensive to beginners are not fond of Miters and choose the most popular shells.

Miters are mainly found in all the warm temperate seas, from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, East and West Africa areas. Even in the Mediterranean Sea, we can find some few and less coloured than in the warm oceans, which are the Vex. (Pus .) ebenus, (Lamark 1811), with a small size of about 20 mm ; the Mit. (Mit.) cornicula, (Linne 1758), about 30mm ; the Mit. (Mit.) nigra, (Gmelin 1791), about 35/40 mm ,and the more interesting one, the Mit. (Mit.) fusiformis zonata, (Mariat 1818), from about 90 to 100 mm. These last one have a periostracum witch can be light brown, or dark red or dark yellow.

You must go to the Philippines to find the most beautiful Miters. They are mainly Vexillium, at the head of which we find the citrinum, the filiareginae, the sanguisugua, the stainforthi …

So, I will start with the more famous sub family, the Vexillinae, (Thiele 1929), and for instance the more celebrated of them, the Vex. (Vex .) citrinum, (Gmelin 1791). It is quite big and can reach 100 mm, but its colour is quite constancy (you can see here its form compressa, (Sowerby 1874), which is smaller). On the contrary, the Vex. filiareginae, (Cate 1961), is as long, but the colours are very variable. With a little patience, you can collect a series of about twenty filiareginae of different colours.