Mr. W. Clark 07i the Muricidse. 109 



more delicate features so essential for specific comparison lost. 

 If animals are to be described correctly, conciseness must give 

 way to particular description ; indeed in zoological matters the 

 term is little better than to express omissions often of very 

 essential features : but if it be insisted on, we must rest content 

 with rough sketches instead of finished portraitures. 



The general distribution of the Muricidce, according to my 

 method, includes Lamarck's Purpurifera, which have, as I think, 

 been separated from his Canalifera on very slight malacological 

 grounds ; — so much so, that though the commentators in the last 

 edition of his ' Animaux sans Vertebres,' state the Purpurce 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 al- 

 together on artificial generic characters extracted solely from the 

 hard pax-ts of the animal. Conchologists have thought, that be- 

 cause the muricidal animal, as I designate the Buccinum of authors, 

 has a short emarginate canal, and those named Fusus and Murex 

 have more extended ones, some of them being smooth and others 

 varicose, they must be generically distinct animals : this is a 

 great mistake. We are enabled to say, from a sedulous examina- 

 tion 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 

 diflFer from each other in colour and slight specialties of the soft 

 and hard points no more than may be observed in the different 

 varieties of the human race : for the short man with the short 

 neck and inflated trunk, in comparison with the tall, thin, slender 

 individual, does not constitute a different genus; neither is the 

 tumid Buccinum or Dolium with the short canal generically di- 

 stinct from the more spindle-shaped IMurices, 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 genus 

 Murex and Buccinum, are zoophagous, and have the fiat probos- 

 cidal head, which is rarely produced so as to intercept the basal 

 coalition of the tentacula that carry eyes externally at diff"erent 

 portions of their lengths ; the buccal fissure is at the centre of 

 the tentacular veil or head, placed somewhat inferiorly, from 

 whence a long retractile proboscis is exserted, armed mth hard 

 parts of variable lengths for boiing and sucking their prey ; they 



