MUREX. 295 
tainty, clearly forbids our identifying a Purpura with so richly 
a coloured mouth as the Lamarckian hystrix with a species 
whose aperture is expressly stated to be white: indeed, the 
whole description in that work applies very fairly to P. echinata, 
or to an immature example of the white-spined variety of 
fi. arachnoides. The erroneous identification possibly arose 
from the circumstance that the cited figures of both Seba and 
Argenville bear some slight resemblance to the Purp. hystriz 
of authors. The former, referred to only in the twelfth edition 
of the ‘Systema’ (the second “60, f.” was a typographical 
redundancy), is a most uncertain figure, that is at least equally 
like the spinous form of P. mancinella; the latter is a back 
view, whence originated the mistake of our author in quoting it. 
What, then, was the Murex hystrix of Linneus? His cabinet 
does not assist us; judging solely from his publications, it 
must assuredly be regarded as an immature example of 
ricinus. 
SUurvexr manetwella. 
It is probable that an immature example of the Ricinula 
spectrum of Reeve was the original of this species, at least 
such a shell would answer to the description in the ‘ Systema,’ 
and two adult examples of it (Mart. Conch. Cab. iii. f. 971, 
named Purp. Martiniana by Anton) are so marked in the Lin- 
nean collection. No drawing of it having been published at 
that period, Linneeus has indicated the two nearest approaches 
to a representation of it he could find in the respective figures 
of Rumphius and Argenyille. The latter, a very rude en- 
graving, only cited in the twelfth edition, was also more cor- 
rectly referred by himself to Buc. patulum; the former was a 
dorsal view of Purpura echinata, a shell which does not exhibit 
the “columella striata” of the diagnosis. Hence there is no 
definition in the ‘Systema,’ for such a term can scarcely be 
applied to a description of barely two lines elucidated! by two 
discordant synonyms. Naturalists, consequently, sought in the 
‘Museum Ulrice’ for the obscure species of the earlier publi- 
cation, and have bestowed the name of Purpura mancinella 
upon a shell (Kiener, Purp. f. 46) which so fairly corresponds 
