OF SELBORNE. 227 
filmy threads, when first shot, might be entangled 
in the rising dew, and so drawn up, spiders and all, 
by a brisk evaporation, into the regions where 
clouds are formed ; and if the spiders have a pow- 
er of coiling and thickening their webs in the air, 
as Dr. Lister says they have [see his Letters to 
Mr. Ray], then, when they were become heavier 
than the air, they must fall. 
Every day in fine weather, in autumn chiefly, do 
I see those spiders shooting out their webs and 
mounting aloft: they will go off from your finger 
if you will take them into your hand. Last sum. 
mer 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 off 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 
locomotive power without the use of wings, and to 
move in the air faster than the air itself. 
LETTER XXIV. 
Selborne, Aug. 15, 1775. 
Dear Sir,—Tuere is a wonderful spirit of soci- 
ality in the brute creation; the congregating of 
gregarious birds in the winter is a remarkable in. 
stance. 
Many horses, though quiet with company, will 
not stay one minute in a field by themselves: the 
