found in a damp Meadow, 275 



heated : neutralized by any acid, the substance was again pre- 

 cipitated. The sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic acids also acted 

 upon it while cold, and entirely dissolved it by heat. The 

 nitric acid turned somewhat yellow, the sulphuric acid brown; 

 the muriatic acid remained colourless. 



From these experiments it is evident that this substance did 

 not resemble albumen, but essentially agreed with jelly, and re- 

 sembled the slime of springs. It consisted of 



Gelatinous substance 18*8 



Animal ditto traces 



Phosphate of lime and phosphate of soda, with V 



an organic acidity J 



Water 800 



100-0 



What now is the origin of this substance ? 



The evident existence of an organic structure will not al- 

 low any opinion of its being of an atmospheric formation, but 

 shows on the contrary that its origin must be terrestrial and 

 of an animal kind. Its striking resemblance to an intestine, 

 led me at first to suppose that it might have been the intestine 

 of a bird ; but its containing a smooth jelly, and being inclosed 

 in so fine a membrane, compared with the tougher skin of any 

 intestine, which could not have swelled to the degree mentioned, 

 the want of the usual contents of an intestine, &c. left ultimately 

 no room for such a supposition. But the chemical resem- 

 blance of this substance to the spawn of frogs, led me to the 

 idea of its being perhaps the spawn of some animal. It could 

 not be that of a frog, but it might be the swelled spawn of a 

 snail, such as are frequently found in damp meadows ; as the 

 Limax vufus, agrestis, stagnalis, fyc. I compared the descrip- 

 tions given in this respect in Cuvier's Comparative Anatomy ; 

 in Oken's Natural History, iii. chap. i. p. 309 ; in the same 

 author's Natural History for Schools, p. 668 ; in Goldfuss' 

 Hanbuch der Zoologie, i. p. 661, and other works; — in all of 

 which, however, I found little information respecting the object 

 of my research ; viz. the spawn of snails. Oken, in his Natural 

 History for Schools, however, remarks, when speaking of Li- 

 max stagnalis, that " its spawn was a small gelatinous cylin- 

 der, of one inch in length and one line in thickness, containing 

 a dozen small yellow eggs ; that these rows of eggs generally 

 adhere to some aquatic plants, and at the end of a fortnight 

 or three weeks the young snail crept out of it." Oken further 

 mentions in his Natural History, concerning the limaces : 

 " The excremental canal of the sexual bladder is short, ends 

 in the vagina close to the ovarium, much longer as it should 



2 N 2 seem, 



