SPIDERS 155 



small scarlet mites or the small shiny-bodied black Linyphiid 

 spiders, both of which are not infrequently found running over 

 one's clothes on sunny days, is uncertain. As the mites do not spin 

 silk, however, and the Linyphiids are responsible for the silver 

 sheets of gossamer which cloak our fields in autumn it is appro- 

 priate that they and not the mites, should be awarded the title. 

 (For a number of Red Indian superstitions and myths, see 

 Gertsch, 1949*). 



Among the many remarkable traits of spiders, none has excited 

 greater interest nor produced more fantastic speculation than that 

 of 'ballooning'. The ancients were familiar with some of the 

 phenomena attending the flight of spiders, for Aristotle believed 

 that spiders could shoot out their threads, and Pliny wrote: *In the 

 year that L. Paulus and C. Marcellus were consuls, it rained wool.* 

 Often during the late summer and autumn months on quiet, hazy 

 days, the air is filled with shining strands and threads of gossamer, 

 the silk produced by the spiders that have attempted to fly and 

 failed. Sometimes one sees a field or meadow carpeted with silk 

 and a host of little spiderlings spreading their lines in vain attempts 

 to fly. On the other hand many are successful — Darwin, in 1839, 

 recorded the arrival on H. M.S. Beagle of Vast numbers of a small 

 spider, about one-tenth of an inch in length, and of a dusky red 

 colour' when the ship was sixty miles from the coast of South 

 America — and ballooning is without doubt an important factor in 

 the distribution of many species all over the world. Nor is it con- 

 fined to any particular season. In Britain, aeronautic dispersal of 

 immature spiders takes place mainly in summer, of adult Liny- 

 phiidae chiefly during the colder months when temperature is the 

 most important micro-climatic factor, and ballooning is inhibited 

 during unfavourable weather (Duffey, 1956). 



The prosaic translate 'gossamer' as 'goose summer' in reference 

 to the fanciful resemblance of the fragile skeins of silk to the down 

 of geese which the thrifty housewife causes to fly when she reno- 

 vates her feather beds and pillows; but gossamer translated as 

 'God's summer' refers to the legend that this gossamer 'is the 

 remnant of Our Lady's winding sheet which fell away in these 

 lightest fragments as she was assumed into heaven' (Bishop, 

 1945). 



