Bilge
the breadth of a ship's bottom, or that part of her floor which approaches to a horizontal direction, on which she would rest if aground. Bilge water, water which enters a ship and lies upon her bilge or bottom. Bilge ways, planks of timber placed under a vessel's bilge on the building slip to support her while launching. BILHARZIA (distomum or gynæcophorus hæmatobius), a parasitic flat worm in the fluke or trematode order, and belonging either to the same genus as the common liver fluke (D. hepaticum), or to one very closely related. In all other trematodes the sexes are united, the animals are hermaphrodite, but here a grooved canal, formed from two folds of skin on the ventral surface of the larger male, contains the female.
Pairs thus united are found in the portal and other vessels in the abdominal region, both in men and monkeys. They are especially abundant in boys, and cause hæmaturia and other troubles.
They occur from Egypt southward to the Cape. It is said that half of the Fel- BILL lah and Copt population of Egypt suffer from this parasite. The embryos are ciliated, but the life history is not known.