MURICIDA. 477 
think, been separated from his Canalifera on very slight 
malacological grounds ;—so much s0, that though the com- 
mentators, in the last edition of his ‘Animaux sans Vertébres,’ 
state that the Purpure are sufficiently distinguished from the 
Murices, I must dissent from that opinion, and challenge the 
production of even one essentially distinct generic character 
between the two families. There are about twenty-two genera 
which have sprung from Murex and Buccinum, whereof six or 
seven embrace British species, and fourteen or fifteen the exotic. 
The present arrangement of the moderns appears to rest 
altogether on artificial generic characters derived solely from 
the hard parts of the animal. Conchologists have thought, 
that because the Muricidal animal, as I designate the Bucci- 
num of authors, has a short emarginate canal, and those named 
Fusus and Murex have more extended ones, some of them 
bemg smooth and others varicose, they must be generically 
distinct animals: this is a great mistake. We are enabled to 
say, from a sedulous examination of the animals of all the 
genera, including the greater part of the British species, except 
the larger and deep-sea Murices termed Fusi, that they are 
identical in organic structure, and differ from each other in 
colour and slight specialties of the soft and hard parts, no 
more than may be observed in the different varieties of the 
human race: for the short man, with the short neck and in- 
flated trunk, im comparison with the tall, thin, slender indivi- 
dual, does not constitute a different genus; neither is the 
tumid Buccinum or Dolium with the short canal, generically 
distinct from the more spindle-shaped Murices, the Fusi of 
authors. For these reasons we are bound to consult nature 
in preference to artificial considerations. 
The animals of all the modern genera of the Canalifera and 
Purpurifera, the proceeds of the dismemberment of the genera 
Murex and Buccinum, are zoophagous, and have the flat pro- 
boscidal head, which is rarely produced so as to intercept the 
basal coalition of the tentacula, which carry eyes externally at 
different portions of their lengths. The buccal fissure is at the 
centre of the tentacular veil or head, placed somewhat in- 
feriorly ; from this a long retractile proboscis is exserted, 
