PLATE VIII. 



sportive varieties into which they sometimes divaricate. These 

 remarks cannot be more forcibly exemplified than in the series of the 

 presumed varieties of the Buccinum Harpa. Some of these are 

 indeed so very dissimilar as to justify a persuasion that they may be 

 specifically distinct, and yet again^ these are blended so intimately 

 with others, which arc confessedly varieties, that it demands the 

 utmost caution in pronouncing which are species, and which varieties 

 or transitions only. This is the impression under which the best 

 informed Conchologists have ever ventured to define the shells vt^hich 

 constitute the natural family of the Harps, and may serve to afford 

 us a sufficient explanation of the causes of those differences in opinion 

 whicli so manifestly prevail among them. 



It may not be very generally known, excepting only among 

 Naturalists, that the late Dr. Solander had devoted much attention 

 to this intricate science : his arrangement of shells was designed as an 

 amendment upon that of Linna?us, This arrangement was never 

 made public ; it remained in manuscript in the library of the late 

 Sir Joseph Banks. From a perusal of these MSS. it appears that 

 Dr. Solander had conceived the necessity of a new disposition of the 

 shells comprised in general as varieties of this species. Some he 

 allows to remain varieties, while others constitute, in his ideas, 

 species nearly analogous, but nevertheless distinct. He does not pro- 

 pose the formation of an in dependant genus of the Harp family, nor 

 the removal of those shells from the genus Buccinum, in which Lin- 

 nsdus places the species Harpa : he proposes only to assemble together 

 the least equivocal varieties of that shell, together with that which he 

 considers as the type of the Linnasan species, the tru^ Harpa Nobilis 

 of preceding authors ; and to allow the others to remain as species 

 distinct from the Linnsean shell. It will be hence perceived that 



