CJ GENUS HARPA. 



species, and the shells are of a very agreeable and elegant 

 figure, adorned with beautiful colors, varying in their distribu- 

 tion, and are particularly remarkable for the oblique ribs, whose 

 arrangement has probably contributed to the establishment of 

 the generic name. Linnaeus, and the authors who had preceded 

 him, blending in one group, species, which a more careful in- 

 vestigation has since divided, gave them the name of BUCCINUM 

 liarpa; nevertheless, the Harps have a peculiar appearance, 

 which makes them very different from other genera. Lamarck, 

 after examining the characteristics of these shells, forthwith 

 separated them from the BUCCINA, to arrange them in his family 

 Purpuriferae, between the DOLIUM and CASSIS ; and this classifi- 

 cation has been generally observed by authors who have suc- 

 ceeded him, throughout the methodical arrangements which 

 they have successively proposed. Cuvier, in his Regne Ani- 

 male, placed this genus between the Tuns and Purpurae, in his 

 family of the Buccina. De Blainville, in his Malacologie, in- 

 cluded it (between BUCCINUM and DOLIUM) in his third group, 

 which contains the ampullaceous shells, and makes part of his 

 second family Entomostomata. 



So that these writers, and those who have followed them, 

 retain for the Harps very nearly the situation which Lamarck 

 had assigned them. Lately, a knowledge of the animal has only 

 confirmed the truth of those observations, which the study of the 

 shell had suggested to him. 



M. Reynaud, surgeon-major of the corvette La Chevrette, upon 

 his return from a voyage round the world, first published in the 

 fifth volume of the Memoires de la Societe d'Histoire Naturelle, 

 the anatomy of the animal, and its different peculiarities. But 

 we are particularly indebted to the learned observations of Quoy 

 and Gaimard for a more perfect knowledge of its organization, 

 and of all its anatomical parts, which have been figured in the 

 Atlas of the Voyage de I' Astrolabe, pi. 42. 



The external form of the animal of the HARPA greatly resem- 

 bles that of the DOLIUM and the neighboring genera, in the con- 

 formation of the head and that of the tentaculae ; but it appears 

 to be separated somewhat from the BUCCINUM by its digestive 

 organs, although the diffeiences which are observed between 



