CONTINUED. 357 



burning of phosphorus under the skin. The instrument 

 which inflicted the wound, in this instance, I conceive 

 must have been the tongue, which in these mollusks, is 

 long, and armed with two ranges of sharp-pointed teeth. 



The Cones become more numerous and more varied 

 in their colours, as we approach the equatorial seas, and 

 they form bright and beautiful ornaments to the shores 

 of tropical islands. They seem to prefer obscure holes 

 in the rocks, where they lead a predatory life, boring 

 into the substance of the shells of other mollusks, for 

 the purpose of sucking the juice from their bodies. They 

 crawl but slowly and usually with their tentacles extended 

 in a straight line before them. They are very timid, and 

 shrink within their shells quickly on the approach of 

 danger. Some affect deep water, and one was dredged 

 by us in the Sunda Straits, in thirty fathoms ; and 

 another, the Conus thalassiarchus, at Sooloo, in about 

 forty fathoms, as I have before mentioned. 



To be convinced of the comparatively trifling importance 

 of the calcareous secretions, called shells, in the philo- 

 sophical study of the Mollusca, we have only to glance 

 at the different genera of the grand Gasteropodous divi- 

 sion, where we shall find the same organization scarcely 

 at all modified by the calcareous deposits, which here 

 assume every variety of form, from a simple, internal, 

 horny, dorsal plate, to a complicated, spiral, turbinated 

 shell. It is only by investigating the structure and pecu- 

 liarities of the soft parts, and studying the animals as 

 they are seen crawling about, unmolested in their native 

 element, that we can arrive at any distinct notion of their 

 Protean forms, and of their relations one with another. 



