' Shooting Stars. 27 
was lost in consequence of the absence of the enclosing 
membrane, and further, if the substance should be very much 
distended with water, the grounds of Buchner’s conclusions 
will be easily understood. I believe, Buchner had before 
him a mass very grea “nt swelled, which had dislodged all 
traces of a pellicle, and destroyed the fine vessels ; and that 
as respects his > sarge the learned siatarllat was paehaet 
ly accurate, when he could discover no sign of organization 
in such a distended mass. In his specimen, a hundred parts 
yielded after drying only four and four tenths of solid matter; 
whereas in mine, a hundred pare. after the water had been 
evaporated, left behind twen 
If there is no longer any doabe of the pie ard of the two 
substances, I believe, all which I have said upon snail jelly 
must necessarily show, that the visti of which Buchner 
has treated must have had the same crigin. I believe also, 
that the nature of what is called stern-schnupen (shooting 
star) and sterngallerte (star jelly) is cleared up. And it is 
gratifying to me, to have examined and to have traced the 
difference between Buchner’s and Schwabe’s observations, 
and to have shown, that the dissertations of both these able 
naturalists are equally accurate, each ha aving had a perfect- 
ly different substance under examination.* 
* Note.—The idea, that the shooting star is a gc sae body, is perhaps as 
prevalent in America as in Germany, though the substance may not have been 
so frequently supposed to be found, on this side of the Atlantic. There is, how- 
yards 8 of him. He instantly went to ‘spot, and found a gelatinous mass, 
= if we recollect right, was still sparkling, and he had kept his eye on it 
below the 
bank. It did not, ep eees appear to fall pee ‘the water, like asky rocket 
it became extinct in the 
BP olmcpomerip ete statements, if the shooting star, while luminous, ever 
strikes the earth, it must be a very rare occurrence, in this part of our coun- 
