338 MoriOiNs of insects'. 



*^ Every day in fine weather in autumn," says he, ^' no 

 I see these spiders shooting out their webs, and mount- 

 ing" aloft : they will go off from the finger, if you will 

 take them into your hand. Last simimer one alighted on 

 my book as I was reading in the parlour ; and running 

 to the top of the page and shooting out a web, took its 

 departure from thence. But what I most wondered at 

 was, that it went ofl* with considerable velocity in a 

 place where no air was stirring ; and I am sure that I 

 did not assist it with my breath. So that these little 

 crawlers seem to have while mounting some locomo- 

 tive power without the use of wings, and move faster 

 than the air in the air itself''." A writer in the last 

 number of Thomson's Annals of Philosophi/^, under 

 the signature of Carolan, has given some curious ob- 

 servations on the mode in which some geometric spiders 

 shoot and direct their threads, and fly upon them ; by 

 w hich it appears, that as they dart them out they guide 

 them, as if by magic, emitting at the same time a stream 

 of air, as he supposes, or possibly some subtile electric 

 fluid. One which was running upon his hand, dropped 

 by its thread about six inches from the point of his 

 finger, when it immediately emitted a pretty long line 

 at a right angle with that by which it was suspended. 

 This thread, though at first horizontal, quickly rose 

 upwards, carrying the spider along with it. When it 

 had ascended as far above his finger as it had dropped 

 before below it, it let out the thread by which it had 

 been attached to it, and continued flying smoothly up- 

 wards till it nearly reached the roof of the room, when 

 it veered on one side and alighted on the wall. In fly- 



" Nal. Hist. i. 327. " No. lii. 30«^~, 



