NOSTOCH, Shot Stars; tremella nostee (Lin. Spec. Plant. ; Dillenins, de Muscis, tab. 10, fig. 14; Flor. Danica, tab. 885, fig. 1); tremella intestinalis vel mesenterica (Lin. Spec. Plant.; Dillen, de Mus. tab. 10, fig. 16; Flσr. Panic. tab. 885, fig. 2). The substance in question is not unfrequent in England, and in other parts of Europe, after rains, both in spring and autumn. Very large spots of it are seen in gravelly sods, and particularly on the tops of hills and on open downs, and it is often found on gravel walks. It is met with in some of the old authors, under the name of nostoch, as in Paracelsus and others; and the alchemists fancied there was something wonderful in it, and that it would afford a menstrnum for gold. Nostoch is said to be a word synonymous with Jaculuιn alicujus stellae, vel potius (jus repurgatione dejectum quid in tcrram, flos acris, fragmentum nimbi; as this substance was believed to fall from the sky, along with the meteors which we often see, and call falling-stars. Hence the country people in Sweden have called it sky fall ; and in England it is known by the name of witched butter, in common with some of the gelatinous liver-worts.

Paracelsus, Helmont, and others, however, ranked it with the terniabin, or manna, and thought it dropped, as the lat [7:16:278]ter did, from heaven. It is described, and the chemical analysis of it given, by Μ. Geoffroy, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences for 1708, and is there said to yield, besides an acid phlegm, a portion of concrete volatile salt and some fixed salt. The distilled water from it was believed by some to possess singular virtues in allaying pains of the joints; but there is certainly no ground for attributing to it any extraordinary qualities. Since the days of Paracelsus it has been considered as a vegetable production; but the botanists have had difficulty in assigning to it its place or genus in their several systems.

Naturalists had, however, for some years begun to doubt whether the substance in question was of a vegetable or animal nature, when at length the latter opinion received a strong corroboration from the observations of Mr Platt of Oxford, in a letter printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1776.

“From a child,” says he, “I remember seeing the meteors shooting in the air, which appearance, by my comrades, was called star-shooting, believing the stars no larger than their apparent magnitude. This jelly-like substance, mentioned in your magazine, was believed to be the dross of these meteors, and took the name of star-shot, which passed for certain with me till I had arrived at the age of twenty-four, when I was engaged in business that required my frequently passing over both meadows and pasture-grounds, where in spring and autumn I saw many portions of this supposed alga or nostoch, but never more than one or two contiguous, mostly near the water, when the meadows were or had been just before flooded. My conjectures were various, until I saw a crow pecking of something in a field, which I heard to cry; when turning my horse to the place, I found a frog of the common size, which the crow (of the carrion kind) would soon have killed and gorged, had I not disturbed her, and chased her away.

“About this time I found in a meadow the bowels of a frog indigested, and compact as the chitterlings of a calf or pig, but white as the paper I write upon, though not translucid. I took it up and placed it in a paper exposed to the air, leaving it in some grass where I found it, till my return that way in three days’ time, when I saw it changed to that tremulous jelly-like substance, the alga or star-shot. I was much pleased with this discovery, and took it home in my pocket wrapped in a paper, where I showed it to a society of young persons of which I was a member, who agreed with my sentiments of its being the indigestible part of a frog disgorged by some bird of prey.,

“To corroborate my sentiments of this alga being the bowels of a frog, I luckily saw some of it lying by' the side of a brook, where I lighted and took it up, and to my great surprise found attached to the jelly the head, heart, Iiyer, and one leg of the frog, which had been, I presume, disgorged by some carrion crow, who frequented the flooded grounds to pick up worms and other vermine. There was also some of it found on an apple-tree at Wyston Ma∏∙- na, near Leicester, where I then lived, which, no doubt, was disgorged by some owl.”

Dr Darwin, in his Poem on the Loves of the Plants, is of the same opinion with Mr Platt, that these gelatinous substances are of an animal nature; and that the different appearances they put on are owing to various circumstances, viz. the different birds who feed on frogs, the quantity they devour at a time, and the state of digestion before they are voided.