88 



POPULAR COXCHOLOGY. 



The animals display very beautiful colours, scarcely less 

 so than the shell ; they are green and pink, and dotted 

 with variously shaped spots. 



Family 9. — CYPRJEA CEA. 



The animals have a tolerably large and thick head ; the 

 tentacula long, slender, and placed near each other ; the 

 eyes placed on prominences on the outer part near the 

 base ; the tongue has seven rows of teeth ; the mantle has 

 large lobes, which expand on each side, and cover the 

 shell, meeting about the middle. The shell has no epi- 

 dermis, and is always glossy, from its being covered by the 

 mantle ; it is convoluted ; when mature the spire is nearly 

 concealed, the lips are thickened, toothed, and plaited, and 

 the outer one rolled in ; no operculum. — Marine. 



Cypr;ea. Lam. — Shell oval, 

 convex ; mouth linear, notched at 

 both ends, thickened and toothed 

 on each side in the adult shell ; spire 

 sometimes entirely hidden. Animal, 

 with a very large, smooth, or tuber- 

 culatcd mantle ; lobes capable of 

 entirely, or almost entirely invest- 

 ing the shell, on which a line or groove marks the approxi- 

 mation of their edges ; head broad, sublunate ; proboscis 

 retractile ; tentacula long, subulate, the eyes on bulgings 

 at their external bases ; rows of ligual teeth, composed of 

 one quadrate uncinated axile tooth, flanked on each side 

 by three uncinated hamate laterals ; jaws corneous, ligual 

 ribbon rather long; branchial plume single.* — 154 spe- 

 cies f ; also fossil. 



* Forbes's British Moll. 



t Reeve's Iconica 



