June 2^, 1910] 



NATURE 



49j 



in the lower part, which appeared to occur among the 

 roots of the grass, as if it grew there. Moreover, the 

 mass was much larger than a walnut, in fact, would 

 g'enerally about fill a half-pint mug. 



The only reference I can find from which it would 

 appear that the writer was describing a nostoc is the 

 passage in Dryden and Lee * (1678). 



"The shooting stars end all in purple jellies." In 

 the following note, appended to this passage, it is 

 •clear that the writer thought that the jelly-like matter 

 found where shooting-stars had seemed to fall, was 

 white. 



Note. — " It is a common idea that falling stars, as 

 they are called, are converted into a sort of jelly. 

 Among the rest, I had often the opportunity to see 

 the seeming shooting of the stars from place to place, 

 and sometimes they appeared as if falling to the 

 ground, where I once or twice found a white jelly-like 

 matter among the grass, which I imagined to be 

 distilled from them- and thence foolishly conjectured 

 that the stars themselves must certainlv consist of a 

 like substance." 



Poets and divines carry the record of this curious 

 "belief far back into the seventeenth century. 



Suckling- (1541) says: — 



" .As he whose quicker eye doth trace 

 A false star shot to a mark't place 



Do's run apace, 

 .\nd, thinking it to catch, 

 A jelly up do snatch." 



Jeremy Taylor^ (1649): — 



" It is weaknesse of the organ that makes us hold our 

 "hand between the sun and us, and j-et stand staring upon 

 a meteor or an inflamed gelly. " 



Henry More* (1656): — 



" That the Starres eat . . . that those falling Starres, 

 •as some call them, which are found on the earth in the 

 form of a trembling gelly, are their excrement." 



Dr}den ^ (1679) : — 



" When I had taken up what I supposed a fallen star I 

 found I had been cozened with a jelly." 



William Somerville * (1740) : — 



" Swift as the Shooting Star that gilds the night 

 With rapid transient Blaze, she runs, she flies ; 

 Sudden she stops nor longer can endure 

 The painful course, but drooping sinks away, 

 -■Ynd like that falling Meteor, there she lyes 

 h. jelly cold on earth." 



Several old writers, however, while agreeing as to 

 the mode of occurrence of the "pwdre ser," and 

 recognising the widespread belief that it was some- 

 thing which fell from the sky and was somehow con- 

 nected with falling stars, have tried to find some 

 more commonplace and probable explanation of the 

 phenomenon, and most of them refer it to the stuff 

 disgorged by birds that had fed on frogs or worms. 



Nierrett '^ (1667), for instance, in his work on meteors 

 and wandering lights, savs : — 



Sequuntur Meteora, ignita, viz. Ignis fatuus, the 

 Walking fire, or Jack of the Lantern, Castor and Pollux, 

 Helena, Ignis lambens. Draco, Stella cadens : Est sub- 

 stantia quaedam alba et .glutinosa plurimis in locis con- 

 spicua quam nostrates ' Star-fain ' nuncupant, creduntq ; 



* ".-Edipu-," ii., I, a tragedy in 5 acts in vcrse, with notes, &c., by Sir 

 "Walter Scott, revised and corrected by George Saintsbury. Vol. vi.. p. 159. 



2 " Poems Farewell to Love." Fragmenta Aurea ; a collection of all the 

 incomparable pieces written by Sir I. Suckling, p. 45. (London, 1546.) 



' "The Great Exemplar of Sanctity, &c." Preliminary Exhortation, 

 •par. 7, p. 5. 



* " Enthusiasmus Triumphatns," p. 45 ; D.X.B., vol. xyxviii., p. 422a. 

 5 " The Spanish Friar." Dedication, p. 404. 



* " Hobbinol, or the Rural Games" : a Burlesque Poem in Blank Verse, 

 3rd edition, p. 70 



^ Merrett, " Christophorus, Pinax : Rerum na'uraliurp Britannicarum, 

 continens vegetabilia, Animalia, e. Fossilia in hac Insula repertainchoatus," 

 •ed. ader Lond., 1667, p. 219. 



NO. 2 12 I, VOL. 83] 



mult! originem suam debere stellae cadenti hujusq ; 

 materiam esse. Sed Regiae Societati palam ostendi 

 solummodo oriri ex intestinis ranarum a corvis in unum 

 locum congestis, quod aliis etiam ejusdem societatis viri 

 praestantissimi postea confirmarunt. " 



The Rev. John Morton,^ of Emmanuel College 

 (1712), is, however, the only one who, so far as I 

 can ascertain, ever tried any experiments with the view 

 of finding out what it really was. He set some of it 

 on the fire, and when he had driven off all the watery 

 part, there was left a film like isinglass, and some- 

 thing like the skins and vessels of animal bodies. He 

 records many observations as to its time and mode 

 of occurrence; for instance, he says that "in 1699-1700 

 there was no star-gelly to be found about Oxenden 

 till a wet week in the end of February, when the 

 shepherds brought me above thirty several lumps." 

 This and other observations suggest that it is a 

 growth dependent upon the weather, &c. On the 

 other hand, he says that he saw a wounded gull 

 disgorge a heap of half-digested earth-worms much 

 resembling star-jelly, and that Sir William Craven 

 saw a bittern do the same in similar circumstances. 



The Hon. Robert Boyle,- 1744, explaining how- 

 clammy and viscous bodies, such as white of f:^^, are 

 reduced to a thin and fluid substance, says : — 



" And I remember, I have seen a good quantity of that 

 jelly, that is sometimes found on the ground, and by the 

 vulgar called a star-shoot, as if it remained upon the 

 extinction of a falling star, which being brought to an 

 eminent physician of my acquaintance, he lightly digested 

 it in a well-stopt glass for a long time, and by that alone 

 resolved it into a permanent liquor, which he extols as a 

 specifick to be outwardly applied against Wens." 



Pennant ^ seems to have supposed that its origin 

 was that suggested by Morton, for in his description of 

 the winter mew he says : — "This kind {i.e. the Coddv 

 .Moddy or Winter Mew) frequents, during winter, the 

 moist meadows in the inland parts of England remote 

 from the Sea. The gelatinous substance, known by 

 the name of star shot, or star gelly, owes its origin 

 .to this bird or some of the kind, being nothing but 

 the half digested remains of earth-worms, on which 

 these birds feed and often discharge from their 

 stomachs." 



I have found it commonly near the sea, but have 

 never seen any trace of earth-w^orms or other similar 

 food in it. 



Here, then, we have a well-known substance which 

 may be of different origin in different cases, respect- 

 ing the general appearance of which, however, almost 

 all accounts agree. The variety of names under 

 which it is known point to its common and wide- 

 spread occurrence, e.g. pwdre ser, star-slough, star 

 shoot, star shot, star-gelly or jelly, star-fall'n. 



We have in every name, and in every notice in 

 literature, a recognition of the universal belief that 

 it has something to do with meteors, yet there does 

 not appear to be any evidence that anybody ever saw 

 any luminosity in the jelly. Nor has anybody seen 

 it disgorged by birds, except in the case of those 

 two wounded birds where some half-digested gelatin- 

 ous mass was thrown up. Nor has anyone watched 

 its growth like nostoc from the ground. 



In 1908 I was with my wife and one of my bovs 

 on Ingleborough, where we found the "pwdre ser" 

 lying on the short grass, close to the stream a little 

 way above Gaping Ghyl Hole. For the first time I 

 felt grateful to the inconsiderate tourist who left 



1 "The Natural History of Northamptonshire, with some .\ccnunt of the 

 .Antiquities, &c." By John Morton. M..\., F.R.S., Emanuel College, Cam- 

 bridge, Rector of Oxenden. (London, 1712, p. 352 ) 



- "The Works of the Hon. Robert Boyle," in 5 vol--. Vol. i., p. 244, of 

 Flutditv, Sect. xi. (London, Millar.) 



3 "Zoology Folio," 1766, p. 142. 



