MARINE MOLLUSCA OF THE UNITED STATES. i 
Family STROMBID. 
Animal furnished with large eyes, placed on thick pedicels ; 
tentacles slender, rising from the middle of the eye-pedicels. Foot 
narrow, ill-adapted for creeping. 
The strombs are carrion-feeders, and for molluscous animals, 
very active; they progress by a sort of leaping movement, turn- 
ing their heavy shells from ‘side to side. Their eyes are more 
perfect than those of the other gasteropods, or of many fishes. 
Genus STROMBUS, Linn. 
Syst. Nat., edit. ii. 64. 1740. 
Shell rather ventricose, tubercular or spiny; spire short; aper- 
ture long, with a short canal above and truncated below; outer 
lip expanded, lobed above, and sinuated near the notch of ‘the 
anterior canal. 
‘The fountain-shell of the West Indies, S. gigas, L.,is one of 
the largest living gasteropods, weighing sometimes four or five 
pounds. Immense quantities of it are annually used for the manu- 
facture of cameos, and for the porcelain works; 300,000 were 
brought to Liverpool from the Bahamas in one year. There are 
about seventy-five species; inhabiting all tropical seas. 
1. S. aLatus, Gmelin. Fig. 16. 
Syst. Nat. 3513. 1790. 
Strombus pyrulatus, Lamarck, Anim. s. Vert. vii. 205. 1822. 
Shell ovately conical, rather stout, spire acuminated, whorls 
smooth, conspicuously grooved at the base and towards the apex, 
concave round the upper part, noduled at the angle, nodules 
rather small, columella very callous, lip winged, interior of the 
aperture wrinkled towards the lip; chestnut-brown, columella, and 
interior of the aperture deep blackish-chestnut, sometimes carne- 
lian-red. ; 
Beaufort, North Carolina, to West Indies. 
Genus APORRHAIS, Dillwyn.* 
Philos. Trans., ii. 895. 18238. 
Shell with an elongated spire; whorls numerous, tuberculated ; 
aperture narrow, with a short canal infront; outer lip of the adult 
expanded and lobed or digitated ; operculum pointed, lamellar. 
* On the authorship of this name see W. M. Gabb in Am. Journ. Conch., 
iv. 143. 1868. 
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