PLATE XXVI. 



be carried spirally round a cone or sub-cylindrical body. The sin- 

 gularity of this species (for it is not a peculiarity or character even of 

 the new genus Scalaria as established by Lamarck and Cuvier) 

 consists in having the whole whorl of the shell, from the mouth 

 to the summit, entirely unconnected, while in spiral shells the suture 

 of the whorls is united throughout. The tube is perfectly detached 

 from the mouth to the apex, and the whorls linked together only by 

 means of the longitudinal ribs which traverse the tube at regular 

 intervals, so that the only connexion of the whorls is at the junction 

 of those ribs, which touching each other unite at that part which in 

 regular spiral shells that have the whorls united, would be denomi- 

 nated the suture of the whorls. 



Considering the very zealous propensity of some French Natu- 

 ralists of the present day, and of their admirers in England, to 

 create new genera upon every slight occasion, it becomes a matter 

 of some astonishment that a character so very obvious as the disjunc- 

 tion of the tube from the aperture to the very summit should not 

 have laid the foundation of a new genus, for the reception of this 

 shell, Lamarck, however, places it at the head of his Scalaires, and 

 one of the next species in succession is his Scalaria Communis, a 

 shell perfectly well known by every Naturalist throughout Europe for 

 nearly a century past under the name of Turbo Clathratus.^ Nor is 

 Lamarck singular in this very anomalous consolidation of shells so 

 distant in this respect from each other ; for Cuvier in his Regne Animal, 

 after describing our present shell, the Linnaean Turbo Scalaris, as one 

 of his Scalaires, and informing us it is distinguished by the whorls 

 not touching each other, adds particularly that there is another species 



Vide Donovan's British Shells, Vol. I. plate 28. 



