NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 185 
At the second of those places there was a gentleman (for whose 
veracity and intelligent turn we have the greatest veneration) who 
observed it the moment he got abroad; but concluded that, as 
soon as he came upon the hill above his house, where he took his 
morning rides, he should be higher than this meteor, which he 
imagined might have been blown, like thistle-down from the 
common above: but, to his great astonishment, when he rode to 
the most elevated part of the down, three hundred feet above his 
fields, he found the webs in appearance still as much above him as 
before ; still descending into sight in a constant succession, and 
twinkling in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most 
incurious. 
Neither before nor after was any such fall observed ; but on this 
day the flakes hung in the trees and hedges so thick that a diligent 
person sent out might have gathered baskets full. 
The remark that I shall make on these cobweb-like appearances, 
called gossamer, is, that, strange and superstitious as the notions 
about them were formerly, nobody in these days doubts but that 
they are the real production of small spiders, which swarm in the 
fields in fine weather in autumn, and have a power of shooting out 
webs from their tails so as to render themselves buoyant, and 
lighter than air. But why these apterous insects should that day 
take such a wonderful aérial excursion, and why their webs should 
at once become so gross and material as to be considerably more 
weighty than air, and to descend with precipitation, is a matter 
beyond my skill. If I might be allowed to hazard a supposition, 
I should imagine that those 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 power 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 
summer 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. 
