an ancient musical and military instrument. It is usually taken for a kind of trumpet; which opinion is confirmed by Festus, by his defining it a crooked horn, played on like a trumpet. Vegetius observes, that the buccina bent in a semicircle, in which respect it differed from the tuba or trumpet. It is very hard to distinguish it from the cornu or horn, unless it was something less, and not quite so crooked; yet it certainly was of a different species, because we never read of the cornu in use with the watch, but only the buccina. Besides, the sound of the buccina was sharper, and to be heard much farther, than either the cornu or the tuba. In scripture, the like instrument, used both in war and in the temple, was called rams-horns, kiren-jobel, and sopheroth hagijobelim.

BUCCINUM or TRUMPET-SHELL, a genus of shell-fish belonging to the order of vermes testaceae. This animal is one of the snail kind. The shell is univalve, spiral, and gibbous. The aperture is oval, ending in a small strait canal. Linnaeus enumerates about sixty species, most of which are found in the southern seas.