PLATE CLXXII. 



Inhabits the Indian Ocean. The shell is of a whitish or milky 

 hue, with about sixteen girdles or belts composed of quadrangular 

 scarlet spots, which vary a little in different examples of the shell in 

 point of size, and somewhat also in the tint of colour, but these 

 spots most usually incline to orange ; those across the middle are 

 sometimes confluent, so as to form conspicuonsly one or two broad 

 bands of spots, and not unfrequently, where two such bands occur, 

 they are separated by a pale or whitish band, upon which a single 

 line of equidistant spots appear. Such distinct lines of spots are 

 disposed circularly in other parts of the shell also, as well as on the 

 intervening pale one which divides the two broader bands. 



This shell, from the singular disposition of its quadrangular 

 spots, has obtained the name of the mosaic pavement. Conus 

 Tessellatus does not frequently attain to the size of the larger 

 specimen figured in the annexed plate. 



