We have been at some pains in our endeavours to reconcile our mind to the idea of introducing this Tortoiseshell Harp as a species distinct from the Buccinum Harpa, in conformity with the opinion of Dr. Solander. We have compared our shell with the acknowledged type of the Linnæan species, with every attention, and are compelled, in truth, to allow, that however distinct it may appear upon the first glance of inspection, we cannot implicitly accede to the persuasion of its being specifically distinct. Placing this remarkable variety with that particular shell, the true Buccinum Harpa, the less informed Conchologist would assume as certain that the difference existing between the two removed them sufficiently from each other. Arrange these, however, with those varieties and transitions of the Common Harp that approach the nearest in appearance to both kinds, and we shall then perceive such a close analogy, such an intermediate catenation, as will induce a pause, and certainly under the impression with which we view them, an idea that these variations arise only from local causes, and are not specifical distinctions. As a marked and well distinguished variety we have retained the term _testudo_, which Dr. Solander had assigned to it; but as a distinctive appellation of it as a variety, and not as a shell altogether distinct. That it may not be imagined we feel any disposition to object against those changes in the Science of Conchology, which the more advanced state of our present knowledge may demand, we have no hesitation in adding that in our own opinion the _Harpa_ family should constitute a very distinct tribe from the other Buccini; we believe, also, that had Linnæus lived to reconsider them, he would have comprehended them together as a genus. The French writers have long since done so. De Monfort advances that Lamarck was the first who separated the Harps from the Linnæan Buccinum. This we have already shewn to be an error. Lamarck’s example in proposing them as a genus in his _Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres_, published in the year 1801, and his subsequent observations in other writings, has tended to establish them as a genus; he was not its first proposer.