MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 333 



high above him. Some spiders that fell and were en- 

 tangled upon the pinnacles he took. They were of a 

 kind that never enter houses, and therefore could not be 

 supposed to have taken their flight from the steeple ^ It 

 appears from his observations, that this faculty is not 

 confined to one species of spider, but is common to se- 

 veral, though only in their young or half-grown state '' ; 

 whence we may infer, that when full-grown their bodies 

 are too heavy to be thus conveyed. One spider he no- 

 ticed that at one time contented itself with ejaculating a 

 single thread, while at others it darted out several, like 

 so many shining rays at the tail of a comet. Of these, 

 in Cambridgeshire in October, he once saw an incre- 

 dible number sailing in the air '^. Speaking of his Ar. 

 subfuscus ?mnuiissi?n2s oculis, &c. he says, " Certainly 

 this is an excellent rope-dancer, and is wonderfully de- 

 lighted with darting its threads : nor is it only carried in 

 the air, like the preceding ones; but it effects itself its 

 ascent and sailing: for, 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 *"." A later but equally 

 gifted observer of nature, Mr. White, confirms Dr. Lis- 

 ter's account. " Every day in fine weather in autumn," 

 says he, " do I see these spiders shooting out their webs, 

 and mounting aloft: they will go off' from the finger, if 

 you will take them into your hand. Last summer one 



' Ray's Letters, 37- 87- Lister De Aran. 80. Lister illustrates 

 the force with which these creatures shoot their thread, hy a homely 

 thougii very forcible simile : " Resupinata (says he) anum in ventum 

 dedit, filumque ejaculata est quo plane mode robustissimus juvenise 

 distentissima vesica urinam." 



" De Araneix, 8. 27. 64. 75—. 79 ~. ' Il'id. 79—. " Ihi.l. 85. 



