142 IXTRODUCTION TO COXCHOLOGY. 



" Seeking whate'er of beautiful or new, 

 Sublime or dreadful, in eartb, sea, or sky, 

 By cbance or searcb was offered to bis view, 

 To scan with curious or romantic eye." 



Few among oceanic artists produce a more delicate 

 and beautifully s^Tumetrical shell, or one more liigUy 

 prized by amateurs, than the V.'entle Trap, belonging to 

 the genus Scalaria, and none in which the absence of 

 colour is so lavishly compensated by delicacy and variety 

 of structure. 



Strange it seems, that in a genus including nearly a 

 hundred species, affecting, too, in considerable numbers, the 

 seas of equatorial regions, there is little indication of colour. 

 But when this is the case, the molluscous inhabitant seems 

 desirous to make amends for the deficiency of his tribe; 

 the ground-colomiug of the whorl is uniformly of a rich 

 semitransparent brown, with rings of the purest white ; and 

 very curious is the fact, that the most liighly coloured 

 species, the S. communis of our own shores, is that which 

 inhabits the coldest region. 



The species is chiefly characterized by difference in the 

 number and developnient of its rings; and these are 

 formed at intervals by the reflected margin of the aperture. 



