396 muricidjE. 



ventral length is filled by the small mouth, which is more 

 or less stained with livid purplish red, especially on the 

 inner lip, and at the edges of the short canal, which last is 

 never painted with the dusky dorsal blotch that characte- 

 rises the preceding shell. The outer lip, which is strength- 

 ened by an external varix, arches out boldly from the 

 body, and sweeps in a continuous rounded curve to the 

 anterior extremity ; its inner edge is armed with several 

 small tubercular crenae. The inner lip is deeply incurved 

 in the middle ; its enamel is not very widely diftused, and 

 is usually rather thinly spread : the pillar lip is almost 

 appressed, and is studded below with two or three horizon- 

 tally compressed granules. Fair-sized examples are usually 

 six lines and a half long, and a quarter of an inch broad. 



The animal is similar in colour with that of incrassata, 

 but differs conspicuously in having longer and more slender 

 tentacula, a rather longer siphonal tube, the anteal angles 

 of the foot larger and more recurved, and above all, instead 

 of very short caudal processes, in this species these organs 

 are considerably developed, filiform, and diverging. 



Wo have dredged it abundantly at Torbay and Wey- 

 mouth ; our Devon specimens, by far the finest, from a 

 pure sandy bottom at only from four to five fathoms ; our 

 Dorset, more solid, and intensely coloured from a rubbly 

 bottom of more than twice that depth (S, H.) The 

 animal figured was taken in twelve fathoms off Dartmouth 

 (E. F.) Mr. Clark has taken it at Exmouth, and Mrs. 

 Richard Smith at Teignmouth (Jeffreys). Falmouth 

 (Cocks). It is essentially a southern and Lusitanian form. 

 A varicose variety of incrassata has been occasionally con- 

 founded with it, and led to the belief that it occurred in 

 the north of Britain. 



