PLECOCHEILUS undulatus.
The pleasure which our scientific brethren will receive from possessing this copy of Mr. Guilding's beautiful drawing, will be changed into regret on knowing that the gifted hand which originally traced it is now cold. A liver complaint, doubtless brought on by too much exposure to a tropical sun, terminated the mortal career, a few months ago, of this accomplished Zoologist and excellent man. The name of Guilding now belongs to posterity. His loss, and that too in the prime of life, leaves a blank in the ranks of science, which there is no one so qualified to fill; where can we look for profound and indefatigable research, matured knowledge, a ready pen and an exquisite pencil, all employed unceasingly to illustrate from life the animals of tropical regions. The search, unfortunately, will be fruitless. May his spirit now be with that God whose minister he was, and whose works upon earth it was his purest delight to study.
PLECOCHEILUS undulatus.
Waved Pupa-snail.
Family Pupadæ. Guilding. Genus Carychium. Muller.
Sub-Gen. Plecocheilus. Guild.
Sub-Generic Character.
Animal hermaphrodite, snail-like; the head bilobed, and bearing four tentaculæ, two of which are long and terminated by the eyes; mandibles greatly lunated, with a small transverse mouth and a triangular cutaneous plate; mantle perforated. Eggs large, externally calcarious. Shell oval, ventricose, the two last spiral whorls very short, but elevated; aperture entire, elongated; outer lip thickened and reflected; inner lip thin, nearly obsolete; pillar with a strong compressed inflexed plate. Guilding.
Specific Character.
Shell irregularly and minutely corrugated, and longitudinally striated; marked beneath the olive epidermis with oblique, undulated, dark stripes.
Carychium undulatum (1814). Leach. Zool. Mis. 1. pl. 35.
Auricula caprella (1822). Lam. Sys. 6. 2. p. 140. Chemnitz pl. 176, f. 1701.-2.
Plecocheilus undulatus. Guilding in Zool. Journ. 3. p. 532.
This noble species was discovered by Mr. Guilding, in great numbers, upon the trunks and branches of trees in the forests of St Vincent: its eggs are hard like those of a bird, and the young shell resembles that of a Succinea. In Carychium the eyes are at the base, but here they are at the tips of the tentaculæ.