Shooting' Stars. 27 



was lost in consequence of the absence of the enclosing 

 membrane, and further, if the substance should be very much 

 distendtid with water, the grounds of Buchner's conclusions 

 will be easily understood. I believe, Buchner had before 

 him a mass very greatly swelled, which had dislodged all 

 traces of a pellicle, and destroyed the fine vessels ; and that 

 as respects his specimen, the learned naturalist was perfect- 

 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 parts, after the water had been 

 evaporated, left behind twenty. 



If there is no longer any doubt of the similarity of the two 

 substances, I believe, all which I have said upon snail jelly 

 must necessarily show, that the substance of which Buchner 

 has treated must have had the same origin. I believe also, 

 that the nature of what is called stern-schnitpen (shooting- 

 star) and sterngallerte (star jelly) is cleared up. And it is 

 gratifying to me, to have examined and to have traced the 

 ditference between Buchner's and Schwabe's observations, 

 and to have shown, that the dissertations of both these able 

 naturalists are equally accurate, each having had a perfect- 

 ly different substance under examination.* 



* JVote. — The idea, that the shootinsc star is a gelatinous 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- 

 ever, apparently some pretty strong testimony on the subject. A Mr. John 

 Treat, a respectable farmer, and a man of veracity, stated to us, that he was 

 virith the army of Gen. Washington, in the campaign against Gen. Howe, af- 

 ter his landing at the Head of Elk. On the nighf previous to the battle of 

 Brandywine, as he was standing centinel, a shooting star fell within a few 

 yards of him. He instantly went to the spot, and found a gelatinous mass, 

 which, if we recollect right, was still sparkling, and he had kept his eye on it 

 from its fall. A very respectable lady mentioned, that as she was walking 

 in the evening with one or two others, a similar meteor fell near them, and 

 she pointed out the very place where it struck. The late Gen. Griswoid in- 

 formed us, that a shooting star once fell near him, upon a piece of ice, as he 

 was walking with two other persons, in the street of East Hartford. 



We recollect once having seen one of these meteors, called shooting stars, 

 actually several degrees below ms. We were riding, late in the night, upon 

 the high bank of the Hudson between Newburg and New Windsor, when we 

 observed a shooting star, probably for more than five hundred yards in its track, 

 moving in about a horizontal direction to the north, nearly over the middle of 

 the river. It was far below the horizon, and considerably below the opposite 

 bank. It did not, however, appear to fall into the water, but like a sky rocket 

 it became extinct in the air. 



Notwithstanding these statements, if the shooting star, while luminous, ever 

 strikes the earth, it must be a very rare occurrence, in this part of our coun- 



