>This here's the Question man.
>  I have a Conus literatus. It is about nine inches tall. So is its
>opening. It has a perk. The perk is about one inch. The question is:
>what the hecky darn good does such a small perk do?

A nine-inch Conus litteratus? Are you sure it's not a C. leopardus?
Those get pretty big, but I've never seen a C. litteratus above maybe
4 to four and a half inches.

However, the answer to your question is simple: It gives us something
to glue onto that wad of cotton we've stuffed into the aperture.

This past September, I found a 58mm Conus tessulatus in Baja. The
operculum was so small I needed magnifying lenses (the kind jewelers
use) to find it. It was so small it was darn near invisible.
And how about those huge Cassis species (tuberosa, cornuta and so
forth). Of what use could their small fragile operculums possibly be?

Best regards,
Jim