CONCHOLOGY. 



mot fail to excite remark. It coiild scarcely be conceived ihat in the 

 very ample range of the creation which those genera embraced, 

 such uniformity could prevail, and the subsequent observations of 

 various Naturalists have tended fully to assure us that the Linnasan 

 character of the animal inhabitants of the testaceous tribes was much 

 too vague aiwi comprehensive. There are indeed, it must be confessed, 

 a considerable number of those testaceous bodies, the animals of which 

 are still unknown, and may possibly so remain, but forming our con- 

 clusions, from the great multitude that has been recently discovered, 

 and the number of those which have been examined with anatomical 

 attention, we may presume, with safety, that the Linnaean Limaces 

 ought properly to be divided into several distinct genera. How far 

 a methodical distribution of the shells themselves, founded upon the 

 zoological distinctions of the animal inhabitants, may be admissible in 

 our cabinets appears less certain . The greater number of those shells, of 

 which the animals are totally unknown, present insuperable objections ; 

 and the attention of collectors in the formation of the Conchological 

 Cabinet, so rarely extend beyond the more obvious characters which the 

 structure of the shells present, that we can scarcely deem it practicable. 



The animal of the shell before us, Voluta pyrum, has been 

 ascertained and well described by Lamark, De Montfort, and other 

 writers ; it has the head armed with two obtuse feelers of a club-like 

 form ; the eyes advanced and placed at the base, at the outerside of 

 those feelers ; the mantle or fleshy covering terminating in an elon- 

 gation folded into a kind of tube above the head ; the foot, or disk, 

 strong and muscular, and armed with a small round horny operculum. 



According to the Linnaean classification, the shelly covering of 

 this animal is a Voluta ; and so far as the most prominent criterion of 



Q 



