The President's Address. By Dr. C. T. Hudson. 
9 
inclines me to think that it may be a sub-tropical species, whose 
ephippial eggs are occasionally wafted to England ; especially as it 
has been found in great abundance, by Surgeon Thorpe, on a rocky 
island off the coast of Queensland. 
But unfortunately those of our friends, who are spending the 
prime of their lives near the Equator, are necessarily too busy 
with more important matters to give up their time and thoughts to 
such researches ; yet I think that there is a way in which they might 
effectively help us, without incurring much trouble or expense. If 
they would send us the hard earth pared from the surface bottom of 
dried up pools, it would most probably bring over, with it, ephippial 
eggs of tropical Rotifera ; and, as these are constructed to bear a 
dormant condition for nine months or more, they would travel safely 
across the globe, and come to life in our aquaria at home. No 
doubt many such chance ventures would prove failures, but to hit the 
mark one must often throw many a stone. If we now turn from the 
unknown Rotifera that we wish to find, to the unknown points 
in those that we have found already, we shall be comforted by 
seeing that there is still an encouraging store of ignorance awaiting 
attack. 
In the first place, there is much yet remaining to be discovered 
about the reproduction of the Rotifera. Although the dioecious 
character of the class as a whole has been established, yet it is a 
reproach to naturalists that so common an order as the Bdelloida 
should as yet have presented us with nothing but an unbroken succes- 
sion of virgin mothers. There is nothing in the internal structure 
of any of the species to lead us to suspect that they are other than 
dioecious ; all the organs are accounted for, and the female organs are 
precisely like those of the other orders, yet no one has seen the male. 
With such hardy creatures as Philodines, Rotifers, and Adinetse — 
creatures to whom extremities of heat, cold, and drought are the 
ordinary incidents of life — nothing is easier than to keep an abundant 
stock all the year round ; and so, one would think, to make sure of 
finding the male. Possibly the male and female foetus resemble each 
other so much, as to be not easily distinguished when in utero : possibly, 
too, the males are rare, or very small, or live only for a very short 
period : — and it is possible that all these conditions may exist together. 
If so, it would be no wonder that they have as yet escaped mere 
random observation. But patient, persistent, daily search through 
small aquaria well stocked with these creatures, must lead at last to 
the discovery of the Bdelloid male. 
But the search for a missing male is a light matter compared with 
that of settling the yet doubtful points in the reproduction of the 
Rotifera ; points on which some of the best observers hold very 
different opinions. 
It would be impossible for me to discuss this question within the 
limits of this paper, but I will endeavour to give a brief summary of 
