VOLUTA. 925 
Voluta corntcula. 
The cited engraving of Gualtier represents a small brown 
Nassa (Buccinum corniculum of Olivi), which, being destitute of 
columellar plaits, suits not the diagnosis of the present species, 
to which it can only be regarded as an approximation. It is 
clear from the indicated features that the shell should be placed 
in the genus Mitra; and Philippi has suggested, from confi- 
dence in the assigned locality (a limiting character when not 
opposed to the description or synonymy), that it must have 
been either lutescens or ebenus. His supposition is confirmed 
by the Linnean collection, where the former (Payraud. Moll. 
Corse, pl. 8, f. 19) alone of the specimens there present—and 
our author has recorded his possession of an example—satis- 
factorily answers to the definition. The supposed black variety 
was probably ebenus. 
Voluta bivgo. 
Although the details are tolerably full, and the recorded 
characters rather singular, I can find neither an addition to the 
original description nor a suggestive synonym in any writer I 
have consulted. This apparent inability to determine the Lin- 
nean species is the more curious as the typical example was 
received through that admirable conchologist Spengler (n- 
variably misspelt Sprengler in the ‘ Systema’), whose liberal 
impartment of both specimens and information to his cotem- 
poraries should have thrown light upon what our author 
designed by his definition. It is not impossible, then, that 
some account of it may yet exist in one of the innumerable 
isolated papers scattered through the German periodicals, or 
possibly Linneeus never returned the shell he had either bor- 
rowed or been presented with. He has, at all events, indicated 
it as possessed by himself, yet, after long and frequent search, 
I can find nothing in his collection that satisfactorily answers 
to the description; nothing, indeed, that even approaches it. 
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