338 MURICID^. 



species, from F. Islandicus : lie says that it is smaller and 

 slenderer, has a shorter beak (canal) , and that its oper- 

 culum, when held against the light, is of a honeycolour. 

 Pennant and his followers called it, after Linne, Murex 

 corneus. W. Wood went further back, and adopted the 

 first specific name given by Lister. The Buccinum gracile 

 of Costa is the species at present known as F. corneus. 



6. F. propin'quus*, Alder. 



F. propinqutts, Aid. Cat. Moll. North. & Durh. (Trans. Tynes. Nat. Field 

 Club), p. 63 ; F. & H. iii. p. 419, pi. ciii. f. 2, and (animal) pi. SS. f. 1. 



Body milk-white, faintly tinged with light brownish-yellow : 

 pallial tube cylindrical, rather long : head extremely short : 

 tentacles conical, tapering to a rather fine point, and diverging ; 

 lower half disproportionately thickened : eyes on small bulbs 

 or offsets at the top of the stalks or enlarged portions of the 

 tentacles : foot oval and thick, broader, rounded, and double- 

 edged in front, bluntly pointed behind : verge falciform and 

 flattened, on the right-hand side above the foot. 



Shell resembling F. gracilis in shape, but narrower, thinner, 

 less opaque, and somewhat more glossy : sculpture, numerous 

 fine spiral ridges, which extend to the suture on each side ; 

 they are rather sharp (often alternately large and small) on 

 the lower two whorls, flattened, broader, and defined by im- 

 pressed lines on the upper whorls ; the penultimate and ante- 

 penultimate whorls have quite as many ridges as in the last 

 species, but each of the preceding whorls in this has only 

 7 or 8 the first two whorls are smooth ; lines of growth 

 microscopic, curved, and close-set : colour white : epidermis 

 yellowish -brown of various shades according to the habitat, 

 being very pale and almost creamcolour in specimens from 

 deep water, and below the periphery often of a still lighter 

 hue ; it is thin and hispid on the ridges, rising into small 

 whitish thorn-like points ; as in the last species, it is generally 

 wanting outside the mouth, where a bare triangular patch is 

 exposed : spire elongated, turreted, and gradually tapering ; 

 apex blunt, but regularly spiral and compressed, never mam- 

 miform or distorted : whorls 8-9, not so convex as in the last 



* Eesembling (sc. F. gracilis). 



