Shooting Stars. 25 
gested to me the thought, whether this might not be the 
spawn of some animal. It could not be the spawn of a frog, 
but it might be the spawn of a snail which frequents such 
meadows, such as the limax rufus, agrestis, stagnalis, &c. 
I compared the descriptions which are given.in Cuvier’s 
Comparative Anatomy, translated by Mekel, in Oken’s Nat- 
ural History, in the Natural History for Schools, in Gold- 
fuss’s Manual of Zoology, &c. where I found some light up- 
on the spawn of snails. Oken in his Natural History for 
Schools remarks of the limax stagnalis, that “ its spawn is a 
gelatinous cylinder, an inch long and a line thick, in whicha 
dozen yellow, small eggs are enclosed ; that this cylinder 
commonly adheres to aquatic plants ; and within a fortnight 
or three weeks, the small snails are hatched.” . He further 
observes in his Introduction to Natural History, article li- 
maz, that the eggs are first lodged in a cyst or rather a sack, 
and as it is found in all snails, it probably secretes the jelly 
for the egg cylinder or ball. “ Its contents are compact, 
soft like cerate, and reddish brown, on which account they 
have been considered as purple, which is not the case.” 
Though the cylinders of the maz are very small, we must 
still believe, that our substance was derived from the limax 
rufus, or from some other species, and that the great size of 
the mass was derived wholly from water ; of which we are 
persuaded, from the experiments which we made with boil- 
ing water, showing that the contents of a very small body 
may be-distended to almost any volume by water alone. 
his view of mine was further confirmed, after I had put a 
portion of the substance into a saucer, and placed it before 
one of the windows of my study ; when after some days, a 
small naked snail, a fourth of an inch long, was found in it. 
Hence I believe, Iam able to decide with convincing reasons 
in favor of the opinion, that the white gelatinous masses 
which are found in wet meadows, and which are generally 
considered as the substance of shooting stars, are by no means 
derived from the celestial regions ; but they are really the 
spawn of a certain snail, which, though of an insignificant 
bulk in its natural state, so as scarcely to attract notice, ac- 
quires its extensive volume from the water of moist places, 
and assumes a white, gelatinous appearance. Further, it is 
the nature of this spawn, that it is found only in wet places. 
‘Whether the real substance of the meteor called the shoot- 
ing star ever my have been found, I very much doubt. He, 
OL. : 4 
