49 
Royal Microscopical Society. 
the side of the stem to which they adhere. Next, every piece had 
to he hunted over with a low power, in the hope of detecting some 
specimen with eggs differing in size, shape, or number, from the 
ordinary female ones. Unfortunately the stems of the water-lily 
were very thick, and I had to put them in a trough so deep that I 
was often prevented from using a power sufficiently high to detect 
differences of size — and as for those of shape or number I could at 
first find none. 
After two or three days of this work, and of finding none but 
the usual-looking eggs, I at last came upon an empty tube with 
three eggs in it, and these eggs were perceptibly smaller and 
rounder than usual. Moreover, one of the eggs already showed the 
two red eyes quite distinctly, but not a sign of any teeth. I com- 
pared this with a female egg close by, and in which the eyes were 
in much the same state, and in it the teeth were distinctly visible. 
This was at three o’clock in the afternoon, so I left the sup- 
posed male egg in the middle of the field of view, and at seven 
returned to see what progress had been made. The frontal cilia 
were now visible, and the young animal could twitch itself about 
in its shell — but still there was no sign of teeth. Feeling certain 
that it was a male, I sat down before the instrument, book in hand, 
determined to wait patiently for the happy moment. 
But I reckoned without my Rotifer. It developed rapidly 
enough during the next four or five hours, and I could distinctly 
see through the shell, and at the same time the cilia of both the 
penis and the foot. But at half-past one it was still twisting about 
in its shell. It was as an “ unconscionable time a-hatching ” as 
Charles the Second was “ a-dying ” ; and as the little wretch would 
neither hatch nor apologize, I went to bed and left him to his fate 
— namely, to be dried up. 
I confess that I was a little reluctant after such a failure to go 
back to the pond and begin the whole thing over again ; but I did, 
and I was rewarded by finding on my return home, on almost the 
first piece of stem I looked at, two Floscules, each with six or seven 
of the same smaller eggs in their tubes, and with others in their 
ovaries. None of the eggs had eyes developed in them, so I knew 
that I need not trouble myself about them for twenty-four hours ; 
but next day, soon after I began to look over the eggs in one of 
the cases, I saw a newly-hatched young one in the other, trying to 
drill his way through his mother’s case into the water. I say 
“ drill,” for the word exactly expresses the process. With its 
wreath of powerful frontal cilia it swept its way through the tena- 
cious stuff of which the tube is composed ; stopping every now and 
then to take breath, as it were, and to hitch up its foot to get a 
fresh purchase for a new assault. Its progress was very slow, for 
nearly twenty minutes elapsed before the head fairly emerged from 
