OF SELBORNE 165 



difficult to say ; but we know that it reached Bradley, 

 Selborne, and Alresford, three places which lie in a sort 

 of a triangle, the shortest of whose sides is about eight 

 miles in extent. 



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, 300 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 super- 

 stitious 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 aerial 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 region 

 where clouds are formed : and if the spiders have a power 

 of coiling and thickening their webs in the air, as Dr. 



