ERRORS ON THE ORIGIN OF GOSSAMER. 131 



referred to, that few of these webs contain a Spider, though 

 numerous winged insects are found entangled in them. Dr. 

 Lister, however, found more than once in the webs which 

 he saw fall from heaven, one of these mounting Spiders which 

 he calls " birds," and describes some of them as converting 

 their floating lines into chariots or balloons of flake, by pulling 

 them in with their fore-feet as they fly. From the top of York 

 Minster, the same observer watched the descent of webs, high 

 above him, and on examination of some caught on the pinnacles 

 of the cathedral, considered such of the adventurous aeronauts 

 as he found within them, to be all juveniles, of light weight 

 corresponding to their age. One of them he calls " an excellent 

 rope-dancer, wonderfully delighted with darting its threads," 

 adding, that "by means of its legs closely applied to each other, it, 

 as it were, balances itself and promotes and directs its course, no 

 otherwise than as if nature had furnished it with wings or oars." 

 The above appears, at least, a probable account of the 

 formation of Gossamer, that substance of earthly and not 

 celestial manufacture, to the mystery of whose origin Chaucer 

 alludes in our prefixed motto. Some two centuries later, in 

 the days of Spenser, our ancestors seem to have arrived at no 

 likelier solution of this natural enigma, than the super-natural 

 idea that these rising and falling fleeces were composed of dew 

 burned by the sun ; the Poet speaking of them as 



" The fine nets which oft we woven see 

 Of scorched dew." 



