CONCHOLOGY. 



The length of these shells very rarely exceeds three, or at the utmost 

 four inches ; the present shell is rather more than five inches in length, 

 and its breadth across the most inflated part of the middle no less 

 than two inches and a quarter. ^ 



:t if,. ■"■ 



It is not to be denied that the Linneean definition of the Conu^ 

 tribe is far too comprehensive. It embraces shells so remote from 

 each other in their general form, and indeed in most particulars, that 

 we can scarcely be surprised to observe a disposition in later writers 

 to amend his distribution, whether under the form of different families 

 or as new and independent genera. This was requisite, though not 

 in our mind to the extent these writers have proceeded : Bruguiere 

 and Lamarck, following the example of Favanne and others of their 

 predecessors, in their early works divided the Conus genus into three 

 sections, the first having a coronated spire, the second a spire of ^ 

 conic shape and not coronated, and the third the spire cylindrical and 

 not coronated ; distinctions not dissimilar from those before known 

 among the French naturalists under the appellation of Cornets^ 

 Pyramids^ Rouleaux, and Cylinders, the tribes into which they had 

 previously distributed the Linnsean Cones, nor very different from 

 the characters which Linnaeus had himself proposed for the sub- 

 divisions or sections of his Conus genus. In the later writings of 

 the French authors, as Bosc, Lamarck, and Denys de Montfort, these 

 distinctions being multiplied, the Cones constitute several new genera. 

 De Montfort forms a distinct genus of the particular family of Cones, 

 to which our present species belongs, the type of which is his Cylhidre 

 drap d''or, Cylindre textile, the Conus textile of Linnaeus, The shells 

 of this genus, according to the definition of the author, consists in its form 

 being cylindrical, as in the olive, Conus Oliva of Linnaeus, and most in- 

 flated or swollen across the middle ; in the olive, the margin of the 



