Dr. Brandes's Examinatioji of a gelatinous Substance, fyc. 271 



tion of systems and technical expressions, which have received 

 their definition beforehand, cannot be employed without the 

 danger of perpetuating false hypotheses, and an apprehension 

 on the part of the ignorant, that these inventions give us some 

 power over nature not belonging to ordinary language. 



The more correct mode would be to exclude from the na- 

 tural method most of these terms, and to employ in their place 

 some convertible words'of looser import, as indeed M. Cuvier 

 has to some extent done ; such for instance, as group, section, 

 division, to express those larger assemblages of approximations 

 to assigned forms, which are rather predicated than proved ; 

 and in many cases to point them out by mere signs, such as 

 are used in printing. Thus, for instance, the word section, 

 or any similar word, might be employed to express the plants 

 severally comprehended in the order Graminea?, the class 

 Composite?, and the division Monocotyledones ; and where the 

 characters are less definite, the plants pointed at might be 

 assembled under a simple asterisk. 



One chief recommendation of the natural system over the 

 artificial, is the liberty which it leaves to the mind. The one 

 shuts it in to the narrowest scope of observation, while the 

 other suffers it to range in search of all the properties belong- 

 ing to created beings ; their functions, their structure, relations 

 and resemblances, affinities and analogies. It is speculative 

 and general truth that the natural system enables us to pur- 

 sue ; and this will never submit to be bound by any fetters 

 which the art of man can invent. Books after all are but a 

 rude mode of holding knowledge together ; and language but 

 an imperfect vehicle to convey with precision the just relations 

 of things. At best it bears the image of the earthy, while 

 things themselves bear the image of the heavenly. 



XLIV. Examination of a gelatinous Substance found in a damp 

 Meadow; — as a Contribution to the Knowledge of the Meteors 

 called Shooting-Stars. By Dr. R. Brandes*. 



"Il/fY friend Dr. Buchner communicated some time ago (in 

 -*-*-*- Kastner's Archiv. v. 182), a treatise on the substance of 

 the meteors called Shooting-Stars, which Kastner has desig- 

 nated by the name of star-jelly. This substance, found in a 

 damp meadow, was of a gelatinous appearance, and was sup- 

 posed by Dr. Schultes to be Tremella nostoc. M. Buchner, 

 however, having examined it, was of a different opinion, not 

 having been able to discover in it any trace of an organic tissue. 



* From Schweigger's Jahrbuch der Chemie, N. R. Band xix. p. 389. 



Indeed 



