MOLLUSCA. 19 



The Cones have the siphon in general very much elongated, and curved upwards and backwards over 

 the shell ; the head is usually somewhat produced, and furnished with a retractile proboscis, the eyes vary 

 in position, being in some instances situated on the outer side near the extreme end of the tentacles, whilst 

 in others they are placed in the middle, and even at their outer bases. Their bodies are not unfrequently 

 handsomely marked and marbled, but, as a general rule, are less brilliant in colour than the shell. 



The Cones become more numerous and varied in their colours as we approach the equatorial seas. 

 They seem to prefer fissures and holes of the rocks, especially among coral reefs, living in the warm shallow 

 pools within the barrier, where, although slow-moving, 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 in a straight line before them. They are very timid, and shrink 

 within their shells quickly on the approach of danger. Some species 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. In the Asiatic region, the species of this beautiful genus seem greatly to predominate, there 

 being more than one hundred and twenty peculiar to this portion of the globe, while there are but two or 

 three known in Europe, about twenty in Africa, thirty in Australia, and about fifty in America. The 

 animal of Conus aulicus has the proboscis beautifully varied with red and white, and there is a square and 

 very minute operculum on the dorsal surface of the hinder part of the foot. Its bite produces a venomed 

 wound, accompanied by acute pain, and making a small deep triangular mark, which is succeeded by a 

 watery vesicle. At the little island of Mayo, one of the Moluccas, near Ternate, Sir Edward Belcher was 

 bitten by one of these Cones, which suddenly exserted its proboscis as he took it out of the water with his 

 hand, and he compared the pain he experienced to that produced by the burning of phosphorus under the 

 skin. The instrument which inflicted the wound, in this instance, was probably the tongue, which in 

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



Tn many species of Conus I have noticed a very peculiar dilatation of the anterior extremity of the 

 siphon, reminding one of that singular inflated portion of the mantle in Terebettum, which performs the 

 office of a siphon ; and the shell of this genus more nearly approaches those species of Cones in which the 

 eyes become nearly terminal, and in which the operculum, horny and triangular in outline, is partially free. 

 The Cones are not unfrequently marked somewhat in accordance with the colours of their shells. A, A. 



2. OVULUM, Brug. 



1. OvrjLrjM volva. PL VI. Fig. 9. Ovul. pallio elongato, utrinque valde producto, mamillarum 

 serie regulari prope margine munito, mamillis subequidistantibus ; pede et corpore opaco-albis, corporis 

 extremitate postica intense nigra, pallio pellucido-carneo, mamillis nigricantibus. 



The principal specific peculiarity of the rnollusk which produces the well-known shell 

 of the Eastern Seas, termed the " Weaver's Shuttle," consists in the mantle being furnished 

 near the edge with a row of blackish nipple-like tubercles extending to the end of the 

 prolonged extremities. The specimen from which the drawing is taken was dredged 

 in about five fathoms, from a rocky coral bottom off the Island of Basilan, between the 

 Islands of Mindanao and Sooloo, in the Mindoro Sea. It was in a living state but had not 

 arrived at maturity, the lip not being thickened or reflected, and of that tenuity, that the 

 mamilke of the mantle, which, partially withdrawn probably, lined the interior, were visible 



