20 JANUARY. 



and spotted with black, and studded with glands pro- 

 truded through its substance, of light yellow ; and is 

 often edged with a narrow border of red. The proboscis 

 is vermilion- red, varying in brilliancy in different in- 

 dividuals. The tentacles are of a paler tint of the 

 same colour, speckled with yellow. 



Such, then, is the beauty of the animal which in- 

 habits this familiar and plain little shell, a beauty of 

 which those who know it only in cabinets can hardly 

 form an idea ; while, as the observer gazes on it placidly 

 gliding along, he cannot avoid an emotion of surprise 

 that such an amplitude of organs can be folded within 

 the narrow compass of the shell, and protruded througli 

 so contracted an aperture. 



You would scarcely recognise in this shell, or in the 

 Tiger Cowry, that one so often sees on chimney-pieces, 

 the model of an ordinary convolute spiral shell, such as 

 the snail or the whelk. But in infancy and youth the 

 Cowry is a shell manifestly of such a character, scarcely 

 to be distinguished from the Olives and Volutes ; a 

 shell with a distinct spire, a long wide aperture, and a 

 thin-edged outer lip. But when the animal has arrived 

 at mature age, a sudden deposition of shelly matter 

 takes place on the lip, which is greatly thickened, and 

 which expands above so as to conceal the spire, bending 

 inward at the same time and approaching the inner lip, 



