PLATE XXXII 



have been made repeatedly of late years by our navigators to discover 

 the shells in those seas, and without effect ; and this fact appears to 

 be confirmed from the increasing value and importance attached to 

 the species. We are indeed not entirely certain that any of these 

 shells have ever been procured, except as before observed from among 

 the natives of Otaheite, and the value of the shell has progressively 

 advanced in consequence from four, or five, to ten pounds. A specimen 

 in the collection of Mrs. Angus sold about three'years ago in London 

 for twenty guineas; thirty guineas have been in vain ofi'ered for 

 another specimen within the last two or three years, and a collector 

 at this period in London is in possession of another which it is under- 

 stood cost him very lately fifty guineas. These circumstances, if we 

 mistake not, conspire to prove, that the Orange Cowry is a far more 

 local species than might be inferred from the observation of Lamarck. 



Besides the name of Otaheitan Cowry, this shell has been also 

 called the " Orange Cowry," and the " Morning Dawn/' in reference 

 to the latin "Cyprsea Aurantium," and "Aurora," by both which it 

 had been at different times distinguished. Thatof Aurantium alludes 

 only to the prevailing orange colour of the shell, and has been given 

 to it by Gmelin after Marty n. There is something more poetically 

 elegant, and perhaps no less appropriate in the trivial name Aurora, 

 which Lamarck adopts: we may in truth compare its beauteous 

 fulvous hues fading into white with inexpressive softness, to the 

 warm glowing tints and fainter blushes of an opening morning sky 

 in summer. We have also adopted this name as well as Lamarck, 

 for its peculiar elegance, in preference to that of Aurantium. 



The origin of the epithet " Aurora," bestowed upon this shell 

 has probably long since been forgotten ; it arose from one of those 



