SHOWERS OF GOSSAMER 



of silk floated out on the breeze are sufficient to 

 bear them. Then with a vault they let go, and are 

 borne by the gentle currents often to great distances. 



They have no power of directing their movements, 

 but they can add to their parachutes (setting more 

 sail) or coil it up in part (taking in a reef) so that 

 they float farther or sink gently to the earth, as the 

 case may be. When tens of thousands of small 

 spiders do this on some suitable autumn day, we see 

 a flight or shower of gossamer. Some of the spiders 

 many different kinds indulge in ballooning are 

 borne far often, doubtless, too far. 



It is interesting that the essential explanation 

 of gossamer was discovered in 1716 by a boy 

 of twelve, Jonathan Edwards, who afterwards 

 became famous in other connexions as an author, 

 for instance, of a treatise on The Freedom of the Will. 

 He saw and figured the " flying spiders," and seems 

 to have clearly understood that the aeronaut was 

 supported by the silk, and that it was borne by 

 currents. " If there be not web more than enough 

 just to counterbalance the gravity of the spider, the 

 spider, together with the web, will hang in equilibrio, 

 neither ascending nor descending otherwise than as 

 the air moves ; but if there is so much web that its 

 greater rarity shall more than equal the greater 

 density, they will ascend till the air is so thin that 

 the spider and web together are just of an equal 

 weight with so much air." Which is not amiss for 

 a boy of twelve. Nor is his note on the silk itself : 

 " Seeing that the web, while it is in the spider, is a 

 certain cloudy liquor with which that great bottle 



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