442 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 
correctly identified it, the shell was first taken by Belcher during 
the voyage of the Sulphur.” He noticed it at Port Carteret, 
New Ireland, as ‘numerous among fine gravel at low water.” 
There are two colour varieties of this shell—one pale, the other 
dark. Conchological tradition appears universally, but I think 
erroneously, to regard the dark form as 7’. ruber and the pale as 
T. violaceus of Quoy and Gaimard. For the purpose of specific 
determination the descriptions of all older writers, and most 
modern ones, of species of 7’riforis are worthless. The identity 
of 7’. violaceus must be decided by the illustrations of that species 
in the ‘Atlas of the Voyage of the Astrolabe.” This shows a 
slender and produced anterior canal, and an anal notch projecting 
as a complete tube, remote from the aperture. Specimens answer- 
ing to these details, which I collected in Milne Bay, British New 
Fig. 29. 
Guinea, are before me. Though Quoy and Gaimard may them- 
selves have confounded distinct species, and though Kiener’s 
figure from ‘“‘ Astrolabe” material appears to disagree with the 
former illustration, yet the only safe point of departure in un- 
ravelling the nomenclature of this group must be Figs, 22 and 23 
of Pl. lv. of the Atlas aforesaid. In the particulars of the anal 
and anterior orifices, the shell before me, presumed to be 7’. ruber, 
differs altogether, as the accompanying drawings show. 
In the unsatisfactory state of literature, the following remarks 
may not be deemed superfluous. 
This species varies in size, stoutness, and colour; from the 
adult an immature shell so differs in outline, that a collector does 
not at first recognise it as the same kind, for it much resembles 
Triforis gemmulatus, Adams and Reeve.* Asa whole the contour 
of the adult shell resembles that of a carrot, the upper whorls 
* Adams & Reeve—Zool. Samarang, 1850, Mollusca, pl. xi., fig. 34, b. 
