PLATE XXXVIII. 



held in much esteem, being considered valuable, as well on account 

 of the beauty of the species as its increasing scarcity. 



Voluta Episcopalis is a native of the Indian Seas. Gmelin 

 observes that the flesh of the Vermes inhabiting those shells are of a 

 poisonous nature if eaten : that they wound those who touch them 

 with a kind of pointed trunk ; and that the inhabitants of the Isle 

 of Tanna fix the shells in handles and use them as hatchets. Gmelin 

 states that this shell, when living and in perfection in the sea, is 

 covered with an epidermis, while on the contrary Denis de Montfort 

 declares as clearly that it has no epidermis. V^e may very safely 

 add upon our own authority that it has an epidermis, of a yellowish 

 testaceous colour, many examples of which have occurred to our 

 observation within the space of the last twenty years.* 



The modern French writers distinguish this family by the name 

 of Mitre and Mitra, a name given them by Rumpfius, Argenville, 

 and others among the early writers; the character of which as a general 

 distinction consists in the shell being turrited or somewhat fusiform, 

 the tip of the spire acute, base emarginate and without canal or 

 groove. Pillar lip folded, all the folds parallel and transverse, the 

 lower ones smaller : the lip of the pillar thin.f 



* " Subepidermide sordide flava alba maculisque rubris, &c." — Gmel, 

 T. 1. p. 6. p. 3459. 94. "Cette coquille est lisse, sans drap marin ou 

 ^piderme.''— I>e Montfort T, 2. 644. 



t Lamarck, Anim, sans vertehres; 



