Gray's supplement to the Pharmacopoeia : being a concise but comprehensive dispensatory and manual of facts and formulae, for the chemist and druggist and medical practitioner / by Theophilus Redwood.

  • Gray, Samuel Frederick, 1766-1828.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gray's supplement to the Pharmacopoeia : being a concise but comprehensive dispensatory and manual of facts and formulae, for the chemist and druggist and medical practitioner / by Theophilus Redwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    165/1088 (page 149)
    cavity; orifice of tlie deferent canal at tlie end of the exciting organ, on the right side of tlie neck. Shell, oval, oblong, more or less elevated on the spiral side, or pro- longed forwards; external surface always interrupted by rows of varices in the form of spires, or simply tubercles, generally arranged in regular and constant order; aperture oval, terminated anteriorly by a straight canal, more or less elongated and closed; right tip often plaited or wrinkled. Operculum horny. MUREX BRANDARIS. Description. Shell subovate, surrounded with straight spines; beak moderately long, subulate, straight, and obliquely surrounded with spines. Hab. It inhabits the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas; the shell is white, cinereous, or brownish, with a triple row of small spines, the third row shorter, rarely a single row, with the beak unarmed. Purpura. (Brugiere.) Purple-fish. It is known by its flattened columella, which is trenchant near the end opposite to the spine, and which, with the external margin, forms a canal there, sunk in the shell, but not salient. The Purpuree were scattered among the Buccinse and Murices of Linnasus. The animal resembles that of a true Buccinum. It has been usual to confound together the genera of the Murex and Purpura, and to use the words as synonymous; but though there is some general resemblance between many of the shells of the two genera, yet they are easily distinguished by this, that the mouth of the purpura is less long, and is less dentated and alated than that of the murex. The body and the head of the shells of this genus are not so elevated as those of the murex kind, and are not covered with points or buttons at the mouth. If a shell is therefore found to have a small, smooth, and round mouth, and a body covered with undu- lated leaves, and sometimes with long points, and its tail, whether long or short, be hollowed and somewhat bent, this may be called a purpura, and not a murex. Linnseus makes the purpura a species of murex. Use. The purpura, as well as the murex, served among the ancients to afford the fine purple dye they were so fond of, and some of the Buccinse (e. g. the Lapillus of Linnaeus) have been of late found to possess the same property. Hob. The purpura and murex are both fished up in great plenty in the Gulf of Tarentum, but the small quantity of the coloured juice which each fish contains, and the necessity of using it before the animal dies, render it impossible to make it a regular article of trafiic. The ancients used this colour only on cotton and woollen stuffs; whereas our cochineal, which was unknown to the ancients, strikes equally well on silks and stuffs. These shells are also found in various parts of the Mediterranean. In the seas of the Spanish West Indies, about Nicoya, is found a shell-fish which perfectly resembles the ancient purpura, and is probably the very same. The purple dye is said to lie in the throat of the fish. On the coast of the South Sea,