But it is not, as before observed, within our province in this place, to enter into any such latitude of explanation as an ample illustration of these remarks may be conceived to merit. It is our object only to express ourselves in general terms: it may be sufficient therefore to observe, that among the luxuries of the great in the times of Pliny, Oppian, and Juvenal, it is certain they indulged their peculiar taste in the study of these productions of the deep. They not only amassed together the more curious among those shells whose beauty attracted their regard, they entered also to some extent into their history and manners, and were sufficiently informed as to their natural properties to render them subservient to the general purposes of luxury and life. They knew the distinctions between the land, the fresh-water, and the marine tribes of shells, and they proceeded with minuteness and sometimes fully into their history. No classic reader of the Halieutics of Oppian will doubt the general acquaintance of the ancients with those beings in their native element, nor will any one imagine, who is conversant with the lives of the philosophers of the infant ages of the world, that the study of Conchology, even as a science, was unknown. So many writings of the ancients, even of the classic ages of Greece and Rome, have disappeared, that it may be now impossible to form any very accurate conclusions, at the same time that enough remains to justify our persuasion that it was far from inconsiderable. Among others, the works of Aristotle, the preceptor of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander, have survived the ravages of time, and very happily, for the history of human knowledge unfolds to us the views which the ancients had then taken of natural science, and among the rest of the science of Conchology; and there is, moreover, every reason to believe that in the classification of the testaceous tribes, or shells, which the writings of this philosopher present us, we, in reality, possess the arrangement of the shells composing the Conchological collection of that most potent monarch, the conqueror of the world:—the classical distribution of the shells of the great Alexander, as they were disposed by the most celebrated naturalist of his age, and at a period more remote than three centuries before the commencement of the Christian æra.

The Science of Conchology, like that of all other branches of nature, has undergone its mutations at various periods. Generally, it has held a rank of some eminence, a circumstance attributable no doubt to the peculiar beauty of this interesting tribe. In speaking of the latter times, the period of the last and preceding centuries, it would be difficult to determine in which country of civilized Europe the science of Conchology has been most esteemed; at one time, the virtuosi of Holland, at another of France, and latterly of Britain, have endeavoured to produce the most extensive and costly cabinets of Conchology, and each in consequence may perhaps have excelled alternately; nor were other countries of Europe in this respect less emulous, or materially deficient in the number and excellence of their collections in this department of nature, during the same periods.

We have been unavoidably led into this train of digression and remark from a due consideration of the very interesting history connected with the shells which form the subject of the annexed Plate, the particulars of which, it is presumed, will be found to justify the general tendency of these observations, and these remarks may be considered also as a prelude to the introduction of many others among the number of those rarities which it is within our contemplation to produce progressively in the course of the present work; shells, to which the prevalence of general taste has assigned a value and importance scarcely less considerable than the nonpareil cones, or the eminently celebrated cedo nulli.

The first shell in the plate before us that invites attention from its magnitude is that superb cone delineated at figure I. This shell, which once held a distinguished place in the Leverian Museum, is two inches and six-eighths in length, its greatest breadth one inch and three-eighths. The general colour pale yellowish, with two bands of chesnut, marked with irregular arrow-headed spots of white, and an intermediate narrow band composed of white spots of the same form, each connected by means of an intervening dot of chesnut, which, together, form a catenated band of peculiar elegance. When very closely examined with the aid of a magnifier, the whole surface of the shell appears finely reticulated with yellow.

This shell was sold in one of the latter day’s sale of the Leverian Museum for the sum of five guineas and a half.

FIGURE II.
CONUS AMMIRALIS var AMBOINENSIS β.
SIX-BANDED AMBOYNA HIGH-SPIRED
ADMIRAL SHELL.

Spire high and tapering; shell subpyriform; smooth, pale yellowish, sprinkled with fulvous; body-wreath with six bands, the three uppermost linear, and composed of alternate white and chesnut-coloured dots, the three lower of two broad castaneous bands, marked with subsaggitate oval spots, and an intermediate narrow belt of alternate brown and white dots.

This shell, like the former, (fig. I) constituted part of the Leverian collection of exotic shells. Its length is an inch and half, its greatest breadth exceeding five-eighths of an inch.

Notwithstanding the inferiority of its size, this very elegant and curious shell is not less interesting than the preceding. The general tints in both are nearly the same, but in the present shell are rather deeper, the dots of fulvous brighter and more thickly sprinkled, and the bands more numerous. Like the former shell it has two broad bands of brown, checquered with subovate spots of white, and an intermediate dotted line, but these are placed rather nearer towards the narrower end of the shell, and the intervening space between the spire and the larger band, encompassed or girt round with two other linear bands, composed of white and brown dots, besides another still more conspicuous, and composed of larger spots along the base or body-wreath, contiguous to the spire or turban.