74 THE ROTIFERA. 
Length, 1, inch. Habitat. Stratford; Maidenhead; Cheltenham; Birmingham ; 
Starmont Loch, Dundee (P.H.G.); pools and dykes: rare. 
§. EUDACTYLOTUM, Gosse, sp. noy. 
(Pl. XXI. fig. 4.) 
SP. CH. Lorica pear-shaped, depressed and narrowed in front ; toes as long as all 
the rest of the animal. 
[S. eudactylotum was discovered in September 1881 in a small loch in Perthshire, 
by Mr. Hood, who sent me a tube of the water. This I found well peopled with this 
charming species. It is much more globose than longicawdwm, and much more trans- 
lucent, looking like an oval bubble of clear glass. The head is small, formed of several 
ciliated eminences. Among the turbid clouds, which are probably brain-matter, there 
are one or two oval spots, which refract the light strongly ; but I cannot interpret them. 
As a small red eye always moyes to and fro with the movements of the mastax, I con- 
clude that they are organically united as in longicaudwm. The ineus and mallei are 
much more normal than in that species. The manubria, however, are tripartite, and 
the middle joint is largely and somewhat irregularly looped. The apparatus is un- 
usually minute, obscure, and difficult. The mastax is distinctly three-lobed. There 
are a long csophagus, wide stomach, intestine, and small ovary with nucleated 
ovarian vesicles. In one example was a small maturing egg. The longitudinal 
muscles are numerous, and unusually conspicuous, owing to the brilliant trans- 
parency. But the most remarkable feature is the foot of three articulations, with 
strongly marked condyles, and a pair of fureate toes of excessive length and tenuity. 
They are usually straight, but are sometimes a little curved outward at their tips. It is 
graceful and elegant in its motions. I have never seen one resting, but invariably swim- 
ming with a smooth even gliding, not at all rapid, often varied by a sudden spring or 
skip to one side, like its fellow S. longicawdum. The toes are very flexible, and highly 
elastic ; sometimes when the animal suddenly turns, I have seen the toes bent almost 
double, but recovering their straightnessin a moment. That the mtegument is a proper 
lorica, closed and vase-like, is undeniable; yet it is so thin and flexible that the head 
retracted every instant carries with it the in-turned delicate front edge, which is again 
everted. At the moment of eversion I have repeatedly seen what I believe to be an an- 
tennal seta of exceeding tenuity ; but certainly no tubule or pimple.— P.H.G.] 
The lorica is tolerably flat on the ventral surface, but on the dorsal is distinctly 
gibbous behind and depressed in front. Like that of Brachionus, it deepens down to the 
hinder third of its length, and then suddenly drops with two abrupt curves. Viewed 
dorsally (fig. 4), it can be seen that a central portion of the lower third is arched above 
the general surface, and kept so bent by transverse muscular fibres. The head on the ven- 
tral surface is scooped into a hollow above the buccal funnel, and the corona bears two 
hemispherical ciliated prominences. On the long esophagus, at a little distance from 
the stomach, are two small stalked glands (fig. 4a) similar to those in Pterodina and 
other Rotifera. The gastric glands are of unusual size and form. They are Y-shaped 
(fig. 4), and each has its stem attached to the top of the stomach, and its outer branch 
continued up to, and round, the inner dorsal surface of the lorica, to which it is attached. 
Each inner branch hangs down, pointing inwards, towards the ventral surface, to which 
it is probably tied by a fine fibre. These glands are distinctly, though delicately, 
spotted with nuclei. The vascular system is best seen from the ventral surface (fig. 40), 
where the lateral canals, surrounded by wide ribbons of delicate floccose matter, seem 
to adhere to a considerable portion of the lorica, keeping chiefly toward the sides. The 
contractile vesicle (fig. 4b) looks asif it consisted of an oval central chamber, surrounded 
by several smaller: an appearance probably due to the muscular fibres crossing it in a 
somewhat regular pattern. It is rather large, and a side view (fig. 4a) shows that it 
lies by itself at the hind end of the-inner ventral surface, while the rest of the viscera 
