Pvn H,i I'UitlS

TELLTNID.E. 365
entire aspect of the typical Tellinida" but that its
position differs in being very little posterior
to the
centre of the ventral range, instead of the tubes being
from the
(as is more usual in that family) protruded
posterior angle. He also remarks that the colour of the
animal, when killed by hot water, often changes to the
various hues of orange, red, and brown,— a condition
which prevails more or less in all the testaceous Mol-
lusca, and particularly in the bivalves. We must look
to the carcinologists for an explanation of this phe-
nomenon, remembering the old simile of Aurora :
" And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn
From black to red began to turn."
This species is the Venus inquinata of Lamarck, V.
incompta of Philippi, and, according to him, the Lucina
caduca of Scacchi. Deshayes, in his Catalogue of the
Bivalve shells in the British Museum, places it, with a
doubt, in his genus Cijclina.
Family XIV. TELLI'NID.E, Latreille.
Body oval or oblong :
mantle fringed with tentacular appen-
dages : tubes very long, separate throughout, unequal in length,
issuing from a sheath or fold of the mantle :
gills unequal in
and flexible.
size : palps large : foot tongue-shaped
Shell sometimes inequivalve, triangular, oval, oblong, rhomboidal,
or cuneiform, striated concentrically, and in certain
kinds also longitudinally or obliquely: epidermis generally
thin, but existing in all the members of this family : beahs
incurved, nearly straight: ligament external, placed on the
in each valve furnished with
smaller side of the shell : hinge
two cardinal teeth (one of which is frequently cloven or double ),
and, in certain genera and species,
with a lateral tooth on
each or but one side in either or only in one valve : pallial scar
more or less deeply sinuous or indented : muscular scars dis-
tinct.