CONCHOLOGY. 



some others. It has since occurred, but not in any abundance to 

 later voyagers in those seas. And it is reputed also to have been 

 met with in the Straits of Magellan. 



The specimen of this rare shell which we have delineated, and 

 which always was considered as one of the largest of its species known, 

 once constituted part of the Testaceological collection of Sir Ashton 

 Lever, having been presented to that emiment collector by Captain 

 Cook, at the time of his return to England after his first vo;^age. 

 There is a small hole pierced through the upper valve of this shell, 

 and which, in the absence of all other information, induces the 

 persuasion of its having been originally suspended like several other 

 shells we have already mentioned, as an ornament or appendage to 

 the dress of some New Zealander ; the aperture being so designed 

 that the two valves could easily have been kept together by means of 

 a string passing through this hole of the upper valve, and the opening 

 in the beak of the lower one. The animal inhabitant is probably 

 eaten by the New Zealanders, who besides being cannibals, subsist 

 chiefly upon the marine productions of their shores, which their 

 wives and female children obtain daily for them by swimming and 

 diving into the sea. There is a rare species found in the Mediterranean 

 Sea, Anomia Vitrea of Gmelin, which nearly approaches this species 

 in point of size, and is eagerly sought after, we are told, by the 

 people of those parts as a delicious food. We should, however, 

 imagine from its scarcity, that it is only at the tables of the rich that 

 this luxurious repast appears. 



In adopting the genus Terebratula for the shell before us, some 

 explanation may be expected for our departure from the Linnaean 

 classification, for in the system of that author it is one of the Anomia 



