342 ARACHNIDA—ARANEAE CHAP. 
nerets and float gently to leeward on the light current of. air. 
The spider has no power to shoot out a thread of silk to a 
= distance, but it accomplishes the same result 
| indirectly by spinning a little sheet or flocculent 
mass which is borne away by the breeze. 
When the streaming threads pull with 
sufficient force the animal casts off, seizes them 
with its legs, and entrusts itself to the air, 
whose currents determine the height to which 
it is carried and the direction of its journey. 
The duration, however, is not quite beyond the 
spider’s control, at all events in calm weather, 
for it can furl its sail at will, hauling in the 
Fic, 189. —- Young threads “hand-over-hand,” and rolling them up 
Spider preparingfor into a ball with jaws and palps. 
Coe This curious ballooning habit of young 
Spiders is independent of the particular family 
to which they belong, and it is remarkable that newly-hatched 
Lycosidae and Aviculariidae, whose adult existence is spent 
entirely on or under the ground, should manifest a disposition 
to climb any elevated object which is at hand. 
The “ Gossamer,” which so puzzled our forefathers, is probably 
no mystery to the reader. It is, of course, entirely the product 
of Spider industry, though not altogether attributable to the 
habit of ballooning above described. Only a small proportion of 
gossamer flakes are found to contain spiders, though minute 
insects are constantly to be seen entangled in them. They are 
not formed in the air, as was supposed long after their true 
origin was known, but the threads emitted by multitudes of 
spiders in their various spinning operations have been inter- 
mingled and carried away by light currents of air, and on a still, 
warm day in spring or autumn, when the newly-hatched spider- 
broods swarm, the atmosphere is often full of them. 
They rise to great heights, and may be carried to immense 
distances. Martin Lister relates how he one day ascended to the 
highest accessible point of York Minster, when the October air 
teemed with gossamer flakes, and “could thence discern them yet 
exceeding high” above him. Gilbert White describes a shower, 
at least eight miles in length, in which “on every side, as the 
observer turned his eyes, he might behold a continual succession 
