180
PECTINIBRANCHIATA.—MURICIDÆ.
Whelk (Buccimum undatum), as many of my readers well know, is extensively sold on stalls in the streets of London. Hard, indigestible, and unwholesome as it is, there are multitudes of the poorer classes to whom it is a delicacy; it is simply boiled, and seasoned with vinegar and pepper. With our ancestors it seems to have found a place at tables of more pretension, for Dr. Johnston mentions, that at the enthronization feast of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1504, no fewer than 8,000 Whelks were supplied, at five shillings a thousand. Whelks are caught in creels or pots, baited and sunk in shallow water.
The genus, however, which I select specially to exemplify the family is the following:—
Genus Purpura.
It was included by Linnæus and his followers under the great genus Buccinum, but has now been separated to include a considerable number of species having the following characters:—
The shell is oval, with the spine usually much shorter than the aperture, which, in most of the species, is very wide; the surface is sculptured spirally, often forming fringed edges, or rows of knobs: the outer lip is rarely thickened, but is commonly notched; the inner lip is ill defined, covered with a glassy enamel; the pillar is broad, flattened, and sometimes hollowed; a short, strongly notched canal is present, and a horny operculum.
The animal has a broad flattened head, with two tentacles, the bases of which are thickened by the union with them of the eye-stalks; a reticulate proboscis, a long tongue, armed with
