What does this error message mean?

What does this error message mean?


In my HTML, I have the following snippet:
<li class='cityVillage'><input type='checkbox' name='area'
value='Allston' id='city2'><strong>Allston<span class='citycount'> (56)
</span></strong><span class='expandVillages'>+ / -</span></li><ul
class='CityMultiple'>...</ul>
(This is all on one line in the actual application -- it comes from
code generated by a PHP program.)
and in my JS, I also have the following:
        $("* .expandVillages").mousedown(function () {
            $(this).parent().next().toggle();
            return false;
        });
When I click the '+/-' inside the SPAN tag, I get the following error
message from Firebug:
[Exception... "'Syntax error, unrecognized expression:
[@type=checkbox]' when calling method:
[nsIDOMEventListener::handleEvent]" nsresult: "0x8057001e
(NS_ERROR_XPC_JS_THREW_STRING)" location: "<unknown>" data: no]
Some context: The HTML is loaded dynamically via the 'load()'
function, and the mousedown handler is invoked from the callback
function of load(). The strange-looking "* .expandVillages" is there
because when I wrote it as the more normal ".expandVillages", clicking
on the "+/-" did nothing at all.
I've been using Jquery 1.2.6 for a while without problem. I want to
upgrade to 1.3.2 so that I can take advantage of other updates, but
this is posing a major obstacle.