J'eb., 1922 
The Queensland Naturalist 
51 
The esophagus is a small tube leading to the stomach 
and intestinal canal. These organs are hung loosely sus- 
pended in the centre of the globe, the end of the bowel 
only being attached at the anus, and here and there a tiny 
muscular thread ropes the organs to the body-wall. The 
ovary, scarcely visible in the young, appears afterwards 
as a ribbon-like tissue attached closely to one side, just 
below the muscular ring. Little circular ova appear and 
mature in the inside in a few days, and pass out as tiny 
representatives of the family. 
Towards the close of their brief season a large resting 
egg begins to appear in many of the females. It is much 
larger than the ordinary ones, very thickly coated, and 
armed with stout, thorny spines. It cannot be ejected, but 
remains until the mother dies, when it drops down and 
becomes imbedded in the mud. There it lies during the 
TROCHOSPH.ERA E QUA TOR A LIS. 
Females: One with Spiny Egg 1 Male 
(Magnified 45 times) I (Magnified 50 times) 
[Photo hy W. K. Colledge. 
winter months, and in the succeeding summer, when the 
temperature is high and other conditions favourable, new 
members of the family arise. 
Though the female is rare, the male is much more so: 
indeed, this is characteristic of the group. The “ladies” 
are the dominant factors of their State. There is no need 
of unions or the fervid oratory of a suffragette for estab- 
lishment of female rights; the male is a wee, insignificant 
creature, and, metaphorically speaking, can hide in a fold 
of his wife’s petticoat and escape observation. 
A great many of the males of the species are absolutely 
unknown. With a few exceptions, they are not even pro- 
vided with a stomach ; all their sustenance is the original 
-energy with which they are endowed at birth. This carries 
them on until they pass into the unseen. 
The lord of the Troehosphseras is a little, humpbacked, 
pyriform being, with two little red eyes peeping through a 
ragged circle of cilia around his head, and about one- 
twentieth the size of his queen. 
