OCR Text |
Show 1879.] MR. E. A. SMITH ON MOLLUSCA FROM JAPAN. 199 long and 4 broad. Adams describes 'the colour as fuscous. The only fresh specimen that I have seen is of a dirty transparent white tint, blotched with light brown at intervals beneath the suture, and indistinctly banded with the same colour a little below the middle of the last whorl, leaving a light zone above it which is visible within the aperture. The cancellation of the surface is composed of about 20 longitudinal arcuate costae on the penultimate, crossed by six transverse lira?, rather finer than the costa?, on crossing which they are very prettily nodulous ; this cancellation extends over the greater portion of the body-whorl; and the ribs not being produced quite to the extremity, the cauda is only transversely grooved or Urate. The lip is somewhat thickened exteriorly, thin and crenulate at the margin, arcuate and very faintly sinuated near the suture, and furnished within with about 10 short fine lira? at a little distance from the extreme edge. Columella whitish, only slightly flexuous, and a trifle oblique, covered with a thin smooth callosity which abruptly limits the clathrated surface of the whorl. Adams remarks that " the spire is as long again as the aperture." This is apparently a slight exaggeration, since in the most elongated specimen in the collection it only occupies fa of the entire length. 39. MUREX SOBRINUS, A. Adams. (Plate XX. fig. 3 0. Murex sobrinus, P. Z. S. 1862, p. 370. Shell subclavately fusiform, whitish, with two reddish-brown bands interrupted by whitish costae ; one, the broader of them, rather below the middle of the upper whorls, and the other beneath the convexity of the last. Whorls 7 ; the two apical smooth, rounded ; the rest convex, subangled above, trivaricose, tricostate between the varices and spirally lirated ; lirae about eight on a whorl, those on the upper part finer than the inferior ones, which are compressedly nodulous on crossing the costa? and varices; the latter bear a single, shortish, upward-directed spine at the subangulation of the volutions ; the upper whorls seem to be pretty constantly destitute of spines ; the last whorl has a second shorter spine on the varices a little below the middle of the convex part, and two still smaller ones somewhat lower down, those on the antepenultimate varix falling opposite the lower end of the oval aperture, and those on the last a short distance below it on the right; lower part of the last whorl, with the exception of the end of the cauda, obliquely, finely, and rather ru°*osely Urate. Aperture roundly ovate, bluish white, two-banded ; peritreme thin, produced ; canal stained with brown behind, long, slender, a little oblique, very much closed, rather more than half as long as the entire shell. Operculum (fig. 3 a) reddish brown, composed of coarse concentric layers ; nucleus nearly terminal. Length 36 millims., diam. 11 ; aperture 7 long, and 4\ broad. Hab. Stations 3 and 30. " Satanomosaki, 55 fathoms; Goto, 48 fathoms ; Kuro-Sima, 29 fathoms" (A. Adams). This appears to be a species which does not attain to a large size, and is remarkable for the fewness and smallness of the spines. Of the spiral lirae three are generally more prominent than the rest. |