CONCHOLOGY. 



type of the species, though esteemed scarce, is to be found in every 

 continental cabinet of importance. Indeed, the olive kind maintained 

 a very high reputation and price for many years after the time of 

 Captain Cook, who brought several of them to England ; from whence 

 those continental cabinets were, in the first instances, supplied. Since 

 that time the same seas have been attentively explored by Admiral 

 Bligh, in the ships of his Majesty under his command ; and 

 through his researches, this shell, which was once considered of such 

 unusual rarity, has become rather more common. The Pink, or 

 Roseate variety, the immediate object of our present illustration, has 

 hitherto, however, escaped all research, and it still remains as it was 

 esteemed originally, after a lapse of nearly fifty years, not merely 

 scarce, but perfectly unique. 



An ingenious French writer oP the present day, Denys de 

 Montfort, in describing the olivaceous kind, the type, as before 

 remarked, of the present species, has paid an appropriate tribute of 

 applause to the memory of its original discoverers. " It is,*" says he, 

 to the Voyages of the celebrated Captain Cook, and to the researches 

 of the indefatigable Naturalists who accompanied him, that we owe 

 the knowledge of this fine and magnificent shell." This shell," he 

 adds, appears to be exposed to such a swarm of aggressors, that 

 his Mollusca (oranimal) must lead a life of activity and war : his 

 shelly covering is ploughed, or furrowed, and pierced by a host of 

 enemies, and he must necessarily employ almost the whole of life in 

 repressing their attacks, and in constantly repairing the breaches and 

 perforations they occasion, by the exudation of the nacrous molecu- 

 les, or fluid, with which nature has furnished him, in order to preserve 

 the inner coating of his shelly habitation entire." Such is really the 

 appearance of this shell in general ; we have seen it so completely 



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