PLATE VIII 



Harp that approach the nearest in appearance to both kinds, and we 

 shall then perceive such a close analogy, such an intermediate catena- 

 tion, as will induce a pause, and certainly under the impression with 

 which we view them, an idea that these variations arise only from 

 local causes, and are not specifical distinctions. As a marked and 

 well distinguished variety we have retained the term testudo^ which 

 Dr. Solander had assigned to it ; but as a distinctive appellation of 

 it as a variety, and not as a shell altogether distinct. 



That it may not be imagined we feel any disposition to object 

 against those changes in the Science of Conchology, which the more 

 advanced state of our present knowledge may demand, we have no 

 hesitation in adding that in our own opinion the Harpa family should 

 constitute a very distinct tribe from the other Buccini ; we believe, 

 also, that had Linnaeus lived to reconsider them, he would have 

 comprehended them together as a genus. The French writers have 

 long since done so. De Monfort advances that Lamark was the first 

 who separated the Harps from the Linnaean Buccinum. This we 

 have already shewn to be an error. Lamark^s example in proposing 

 them as a genus in his System^ des Animaux sans Vert^br^s, pub- 

 lished in the year 1801, and his subsequent observations in other 

 writings, has tended to establish them as a genus ; he was not its 

 first proposer. 



It may not be amiss, in conclusion, to observe, that Lamark has 

 taken for the type of his genus, the variety figured by Lister, in his 

 Conchology, tab. 992 f. 55, the shell which he denominates Harpa 

 Ventricosa. The leading character of his genus consists in the shell 

 being of an oval form, ventricose or swollen, and having i;he surface 

 furnished or beset with longitudinal, parallel, and sharp or acutely 



