SOLEN. RAZOR-SHELL. 161 



6. Solen minutus. Prickly Razor-shell. 



Montagu, pi. 1. f. 4 /Food, pi. 34. f. 5, 6. 



Mytilus praecisus. Montagu, pi. 4. f. 2. 



Shell oblong or inclining to oval, dull white covered with 

 a dirty brown skin, opake, striate and wrinkled trans- 

 versely, truncate at the hinge end, and somewhat angu- 

 larly truncate at the other, sometimes kidney-shaped ; the 

 valves not quite equal, one of them projecting over the 

 other at the front margin except at the hinge end ; each of 

 them with two rows of erect spines running from the beaks, 

 one of them along the back margin, the other sloping in an 

 oblique manner to the middle of the side margin, giving 

 that part a somewhat angular edge : beaks close to the 

 truncated end, prominent, pointed, with a broad impression 

 on the abrupt slope under tbem ; inside glossy white ; in 

 one valve a strong recurved obtuse tooth, in the other a 

 smaller tooth, with a deep cavity by the side near the end : 

 length sometimes nearly half an inch, and an inch in 

 breadth. 



We have before us some dozens of these shells, from 

 the tenth of an inch to an inch wide, collected both in En- 

 gland and Ireland, from the roots of Fuci, Sertulariae, and 

 among masses of the Serpula tubularia ; and can have no 

 doubt in pronouncing, that the Mytilus praecisus of Mon- 

 tagu, and the Solen minutus, are specifically the same. 

 The truncated hinge end with the deep impression under 

 the beaks, and the angular opposite side, caused by the 

 oblique ridge extending to the middle of the lateral margin, 

 are strongly marked in them all : and those which Mon- 

 tagu had considered as distinct, were such as had the teeth 

 and the dorsal spines obscure or obliterated, v. v. 



B. With the hinge nearly central, 7 to 13. 

 7. Solen strigilatus. Currycomb Razor-shell. Fig. 53. 



Lister, pi. 416. f. 260 Wood, pi. 30. f. 1. 



Shell oblong, a little convex, white or reddish, covered 

 T/ith an oil-green skin, rounded at both ends, but a little 

 narrowed at the cartilage side where it makes a slight slope 

 along the back, strongly marked with oblique somewhat 

 curved raised longitudinal lines for three-fourths of its 

 p 3 breadth, 



