186 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
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.* 
* Every sportsman must have noticed the appearance indicated in the preceding letter. 
Lister, as above referred to, has some very good observations in his Latin letter to Rayth; 
and at later periods it has been noticed and commented upon by various observers and 
entomologists. Blackwall, in a paper in the Transactions of the Linnzan Society, 
observed, that it was principally young and immature spiders that undertook the 
excursions, and thinks that they are borne upwards by an ascending current of rarified 
air acting on their slender lines. He does not agree with those who think that the flight 
is influenced by electricity. Mr. John Murray,in his ‘‘ Researches in Natural History,”’ 
records several experiments; and on one occasion the thread was discharged to the 
ceiling of a room above eight feet high. On another cccasion a spider darted its thread 
perfectly horizontal, and in length fully ten feet, and the angle of vision being particularly 
favourable, we observed an extraordinary azva, or atmosphere, round the thread, which 
we cannot doubt was “‘electric.”” Mr. Murray afterwards explains various phenomena, 
and arrives at the conclusion that electricity is much connected with them; he found that 
when a conductor was brought near one of the floccular balls they are considerably 
deflected from the perpendicular, and that when a stick of incited sealing-wax was 
brought near the thread of suspension it seemed to be repelled. Mr. Murray quotes 
Selborne, last paragraph of Letter XXII1., in regard to the spider shooting out a thread 
in a calm atmosphere, and observes, ‘‘ This phenomenon it has been our fortune frequently 
to observe,’® and he arrives at the conclusion that the electric or non-electric state of 
the atmosphere is intimately connected with the shooting of the thread, and the ascent 
of the spider. We have often seen hundreds of acres covered with this gossamer web 
sparkling with the morning dew, and the little creatures must have been exceedingly 
numerous, many being seen, and we regret never having attempted any computation, but 
no doubt this autumn will give opportunity to any resident in the country, and getting out 
of doors early. Starck says that twenty or thirty are often found upon a single stubble, 
and that he collected in half-an-hour two thousand, and could easily have got twice as 
many had he wished it. 
