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Notes Ox Oyprjea Guttata. 



By James Hobsox. 



I have recently become the fortunate possessor of a rare and 

 beautiful specimen of Cypreea guttata, a species which I have 

 traced to have been discovered just one hundred years ago, but 

 up to the present time only five specimens have been made known 

 to science. It will be interesting to know that the home of the 

 shell is New Britain, as up to 1870, the present time, I believe 

 the habitat was unknown. It was first brought prominently to 

 light by Gray in Reeve, 1845, who saj-s this very rare and 

 remarkable shell is the largest species of that division of the 

 genus to which the Cyprc&a erosa and Lamarchi belong. Its chief 

 peculiarity consists in the teeth extending across the base in 

 bright saffron-red ridges, each of which passes over the edge and 

 a little way up the side, terminating in a point ; they have a 

 somewhat irregular wrinkled appearance, and are here and there 

 forked. The white spots on the back are extremely variable in 

 size, and as in the Cyprcea vitellus, have the appearance of a 

 miniature firmament of stars of different degrees of magnitude. 

 The back of the shell is not however so highly enamelled as in 

 that species, nor are the spots of the same round definite character. 



Sowerby in his Thesaurus Conchyliorum, 1870, says the dorsal view 

 of this shell bears a singular resemblance in form to Lamarchi or 

 ehurna, although it is much larger and more boldly sculptured at 

 the sides ; but on a view of the base it is at once perceived that 

 the species is one of those that stand quite alone. The singular 

 manner in which the chesnut- coloured teeth are continued over 

 the base and margins, and collected into a thickened irregular 

 sort of platform in the middle, is not even suggestively approached 

 in any other species. 



