BALIA. 273 



not spotted. Balea and Balcsa may therefore be typo- 

 ^apliical errors. M. Ch. D'Orbigny, in the ' Dictionnaire 

 d^Histoire Naturelle/ thought the name might be an 

 obsolete Latin word {balea) signifying a bark or vessel ; 

 but this meaning is not applicable to either the shape or 

 habits of our little snail, which rather dreads than courts 

 the water. Swainson substituted Balia for the original 

 name ; and his emendation has been adopted by Stabile 

 as well as Bourguignat_, the latter of wdiom has published, 

 in his ' Amenites Malacologiques/ an elaborate and valu- 

 able article on the species comprised in this genus. 



Turbo 

 iv. p 



1. Balia perversa"^, Linne. 



perwrsus, Linn. Svst. Nat. ed. xii. p. 1240. Balea fragilis, F, &H. 

 J. 114, pi. cxxviii. Is, 9. 



Body rounded in front, slender and tapering behind, dark- 

 brown with a shade of grey, covered with minute black tuber- 

 cles and specks : snout prominent and rather tumid : tentacles 

 short, rather thick ; upper pair close together, cyhndro-conical 

 and broad at the base, with bidbs about one-sixth of their 

 length ; lower pair very small in proportion, and conical : foot 

 somewhat rounded in front and gradually narrowing to a 

 tumid and slightly keeled tail. 



Shell club-shaped, thin, semitransparent, glossy, yellowish- 

 brown, with transverse and obUque streaks of white, closely 

 but irregularly striate in the line of growth, and also marked 

 with a few remote and indistinct spiral lines : peripJierii 

 rounded, with a tendency to angularitj^ : epidermis rather 

 tliin : u'horls 7-8, convex, but sHghtly compressed, regularly 

 increasing iu size, the last being equal to about one-third of 

 the shell and much broader than the others, the first or top 

 whorl quite smooth, semiglobular, and shining : sijire tapering 

 to a somewhat blunt point : suture deep : mouth squarish-oval, 

 higher than broad, sometimes furnished with a tubercular 

 tooth, which is placed nearly on the middle of the columella : 

 outer lip rather thin, white and reflected, especially over the 

 umbilicus, sinuous outside and sharply inflected above : pillar 



* Awry, or twisted the wrong way. 



N 5 



