BUCCINUM. 289 



offered is the nearly exploded idea of representation of 

 speciesj it is a pity that naturalists should be so unneces- 

 sarily perplexed. 



In Scotland and Shetland this common shell-fish is 

 called ^^ buckie/' in the Isle of Man (according to 

 Forbes) '' mutlag/^ in Holland " wulk ^^ (Born) , in 

 France ^^ bouche-aurore '' (Lamarck), at Brest ^^ grosse 

 bigorne *^ and at Bochelle " burgau morchon ^' (De 

 Montfort) , and in La Manche " ran '^ (De Gerville) . 

 The animal emits a thin and copious slime. From its 

 size and toughness it makes a good subject for anato- 

 mical demonstration — although Cuvier has left very 

 little to be known about that part of its history. It 

 burrows in the sand, like Natica catena-, and its foot 

 is similarly traversed by numerous canals, which admit 

 of its being distended by water : this enters by an 

 orifice at the upper corner of the mouth of the shell, 

 and finds its way, through the abdominal cavity, into 

 the vascular system of the foot. When it burrows, the 

 end of the pallial tube or siphon is either exposed or 

 but slightly covered by the sand, so as to supply the 

 gills with water or air as the case may require. Beu- 

 dant^s experiments show that it cannot live in fresh 

 water. The formation of two opercula by the same 

 individual appears to be congenital, and not owing to 

 an injury of the opercular lobe, which would cause an 

 aborted or defective growth ; for in some of these mon- 

 strous specimens the twin opercula are so large that 

 they are doubled or folded inwards, side by side, in 

 order to fit the mouth of the shell. This mollusk is 

 very voracious, and is often caught on the fishermen's 

 hooks. Orsted tells us, in his interesting treatise " De 

 regionibus marinis," that great numbers of B. undatum 

 and Fiisus antiquus are collected in the Cattegat for 



VOL. IV. o 



