284 BUCCINID^E. 



the lowest point of a spring tide. Mr. Lukis had these 

 specimens ; two were living, and are now in his or his 

 late son's collection; the third (which was dead) Mr. 

 Lukis kindly presented to me. Not being an eatable 

 shell-fish, French sailors would hardly take the trouble 

 of bringing it from the coast of Brittany, and throwing 

 it overboard, for the purpose of puzzling English con- 

 chologists. 



Genus II. BUC'CINUM*, Linne. PI. V. f. 2. 



SHELL oval, not so thick as that of Purpura: spire bluntly 

 pointed: whorls more or less tumid: outer lip sometimes 

 slightly grooved within, never tuberculated : pillar rounded : 

 canal wide. 



The bucca or buccina of the Romans was the same as 

 the tcijpvt; of Aristotle and the Greeks, and represented 

 the large Triton nodiferus, which was the trumpet used 

 in land- and sea-fights, as well as for setting the watch 

 and calling together assemblies of the people : 



" Buccina cogebat priscos ad verba Quirites." 



This line of Propertius was misquoted by Linne (who 

 was apparently misled by Buonanni), so as to make 

 the buccina a war-trumpet only. The type of the 

 present genus, as established by Linne, is our common 

 whelkf, B. undatum. It has been grotesquely meta- 

 morphosed into an heraldic emblem, and forms part 

 of the armorial bearings of the ancient family of 

 Shelley. In blazoning their coat of arms, old Gwillim 

 enjoins us to glorify God for the infinite variety of 

 Nature's workmanship, " manifest even in the very shells 

 of fishes/' which he considers ' ' things of meanest 



* Corrupted from buccina, the classical name of a shell-trumpet. 

 t An old English word : 

 " Horns whelk'd and wav'd like the enridged sea." K. Lear, iv. 6. 



