358 DR. T. S. COBBOLD OX SMOXDSIA PAEADOXA. 



interpretation of the somewhat analogous appearances exhibited by Spheerularia bombi. 

 I am not sure, indeed, that, even now, Schneider's view meets with universal acceptance. 

 In Sir John Lubbock's well-known first memoir on Spheerularia (which not only added 

 largely to our knowledge of the distribution of that parasite amongst bees, but also 

 extended the facts of its minute anatomy), it was reckoned that the male Sph&rularia 

 was " twentv-eiffht thousand times smaller than the female." Now, what our President 

 regarded as the female worm, Schneider avers to be the uterus only, and that wbich our 

 President not unnaturally regarded as the male parasite, Schneider has declared to be 

 the female worm deprived of her uterus or, rather, having her uterus, several thousand 

 times bigger than her body, in a state of prolapsus*. To this point I shall advert again 

 presently. Meanwhile, with a provisional acceptance of Schneider's view, I think that, 

 while on the one hand we must regard the genus Simondsia as altogether unique, we 

 must, on the other hand, recognize its approach towards Spharularia in respect of the 

 enormously developed reproductive organs of the female, which, in both genera, lie, as < 

 it were, outside the body proper. 



Until the appearance of Sir John Lubbock's first memoir, in the 'Natural History 

 Review,' the so-called male Spheerularia had never been indicated. If Schneider's views 

 be correct, it obviously results that the male worm is still unknown to science, and that 

 its discovery, as announced in the pages of the 'lleview' for 18G7, really refers to part 

 of the body of the female Spheerularia : in fact, her uterus was the only part hitherto 

 seen by Dufour and other observers. When, in 1^(57, Professor Huxley lectured at the 

 Royal College of Surgeons, I understood him to accept Schneider's view without hesi- 

 tation; nevertheless, in his more recently published 'Manual,' where he deals with the 

 <;enus Spharularia, no reference is made to the Berlin helminthologist's opinion. I was 

 especially interested in this question, inasmuch as I had, during the previous year, 

 prepared and mounted several examples of Spheerularia bombi lor the College Museum f. 

 From the abdomen of a bee, which was one of the old Hunterian specimens, I removed 

 three Spharulariee, and, in accordance with Sir John Lubbock's views, described them as 

 " three females, two of them having extremely minute males sexually attached." The 

 catalogue was prepared in 18G5, nearly a year prior to the publication of Schneider's 

 well-known monograph. 



During the month of May, ISO.", the late Dr. Ormerod, of Brighton, sent me 

 some parasites from Vespa rufa and Vespa vulgaris. These I at once recognized as 

 examples of Spheerularia ; and I noted the tact that all the insect hosts were females. 

 This peculiarity of habit agrees with what Sir John Lubbock has observed in the various 

 species of infested Bombi and in Apathus. Now, whatever be the significance of this 

 singular habit, it is one which is by no means confined to the aberrant genus of jiarasites 

 in question. The same peculiarity affects Filaria terebra which infests the abdomen of 

 the female black-tailed deer [Cervus columbianus). 



'fhe circumstance that the male Simondsia paradoxa (PL NXXVII. fig. 3) exhibits 



* Monographie der Nematoden, 1866, S. 322. 



t Catalogue of Eutozoa in the- Museum oi the Royal College of Surgeons (London, 1SG0), Nos. 37, 38, p. fi. 



