262 CLASS III. GASTEROPODA. ORDER VII. PECTINIBRANCHIATA. 
shell, and noting the various gradations of form, pattern, and colour on 
arriving at different periods of their existence. It is only by the com- 
parison of many specimens that the growth of a particular species can be 
traced; for on viewing the extremes of age apart, it is difficult to imagine 
the relation that actually exists between them. The shells of the young 
Cypreee were figured by our forefathers as Bulle; Adanson collected 
them in a separate genus, with the title of Peribolus; and a celebrated 
continental malacologist of the present day was some time before he could 
make up his mind to abandon it. The Cowries exhibit, too, changes of 
colour and pattern as well as of form, presenting at least two or three 
different coatings of enamel at different stages. They are for the most 
part only simply banded when young; the pattern which we commonly 
see upon the adult shell is not deposited until the growth is completed, 
and it is on this last deposit only that a dorsal line is often left, from the 
lobes of the mantle not closely meeting, as noticed in our observations 
at the commencement of the family. 
Of the subdivisions mentioned as having been suggested by De Mont- 
ford and Gray, one is a genus instituted by the former with the name of 
Trivia for the small sulcated species, such as the Cypree pediculus, Eu- 
roped, Pacifica, sanguinea, &c.; the others are two by the latter author, 
with the names of Luponia and Cyprovula. The first of these includes 
the Cypree Algoensis, piperita, and a few others; and the second con- 
tains that single remarkable species, the Cyprea Capensis. 
The magnificent shell of the Cyprea aurora is worn as an ornament by 
the chiefs of some of the Pacific Islands even in the present day, and the 
well-known shell of the Cyprea moneta still passes current for money 
amongst the lower classes in some parts of Hindostan*. 
The shell of Cypraea may be described as being of either an oval or 
oblong-oval shape, ventricose, sometimes polished, and sometimes nodi- 
ferous, or slightly ribbed; the extremities of the shell are canaliferous, 
* A gentleman residing some time since at Cuttack is said to have paid for the erection 
of his bungalow entirely in these cowries. The building cost him about 4000 rupees sicca 
(400/. sterling); and as sixty-four of these shells are equivalent in value to one “pice,” and 
sixty-four pice to a rupee sicca, he paid for it with above sixteen millions of these shells. 
