TROPHON. 437 



attenuated at both extremities, tapering above to a very 

 fine point, and contracting below to a moderately long 

 and somewhat twisted beak, that fills abont a third of the 

 length of the body-whorl. When young it is thin, moder- 

 ately glossy, and of an uniform reddish or brownish flesh- 

 colour ; when aged it changes to a squalid white, but is 

 never very solid. Numerous arched and simple (not fim- 

 briated nor laciniated) longitudinal lamellee or riblike- 

 plates, which are not erect, but are somewhat pressed 

 down, as it were, with the edge inclining towards the 

 aperture, traverse the entire whorls ; they range from 

 twenty crowded and thin ones to only twelve compara- 

 tively strong and remote ones. The intervals of these 

 lamellffi (which are not spinous nor angulated above) are 

 not distinctly clathrated, yet occasionally a few obsolete 

 revolving ridges are here and there perceptible, and aged 

 specimens usually exhibit some fine spiral striulse ; usually, 

 however, these intervals are quite smooth. The spire, the 

 apical coil of which is twisted and not symmetrical, is 

 composed of nearly seven rounded (not scalar) volutions, 

 that are of moderately fast longitudinal increase, and in 

 general are rather short than otherwise. The body occu- 

 pies at least four-sevenths of the dorsal length ; it is fici- 

 form or fig-shaped, being swollen above and abruptly 

 attenuated below ; the basal declination is rounded and 

 more or less sudden. There is no vestige of an axial per- 

 foration. The mouth, which is devoid of sculpture, and 

 of an oboval shape, that is produced below in a narrow 

 curved and somewhat elongated canal, which is usually 

 about half as long as the upper part of the aperture, fills 

 from half to four-sevenths of the total length. The pro- 

 minent outer lip, which has a slight tendency to expand, is 

 thin, simple, and arcuated, but abruptly contracts below 



