CONCHOLOGY. 



to the Monoplex, Biplex, Hexaplex, Polyplex, and a 

 number of other genera, recently elucidated and established 

 by the Editor of this work, in a large work on the History 

 of Shells, shortly intended to be published, and in which 

 the generic arrangement will be upon the same improved 

 plan. 



We may perhaps be allowed to observe with what a 

 graceful and variegated beauty Nature has adorned these 

 elegant products of her hand, the branching forms and 

 leafy appendages which ornament the body, the spire, 

 and the beak, the pleasing lustre and contrast of the colours, 

 the form of the mouth like that of a beautiful face, quite in 

 the oval style and richly edged with pearls, which in a 

 drawing it would be very difficult or perhaps impossible to 

 imitate. With regard to the uses of these elegant spinous 

 branches, we are left quite in the dark, and we may naturally 

 suppose that they were constructed thus and thus, in order 

 to arrest the admiration and wonder of all persons endowed 

 with a taste for the beautiful and sublime works of art. It 

 is a singular circumstance that the great Linn^us never 

 saw more than one species of this elegant and newly disco- 

 vered genus, which was the shell which he nominated the 

 Murex Ramosus, and not being willing to make a new genus 

 for the sake of one single shell, he crowded it amongst 

 others, which have no natural relationship with it. It is a 

 shell very large, nearly white all over, and is at present 

 denominated the Triplex Ramosus. 



