354 THE RIVER-SIDE NATURALIST. 



what is usually called the Bull-Rush, the proper name 

 being the Reed-Mace or Cat's Tail (Typha latifolia). It is 

 of a beautiful pale buff-colour, and often on a fine still 

 evening a great many of them collect around and on the 

 stems and flowering parts. 



The PLUME-MOTHS, particularly that large white, floating, 

 plumy Pterophorus pentadactylus, are often observed in the 

 hot evenings of June and July. 



Before leaving the subject of the Insects, we would 

 draw attention to that peculiar white filmy substance known 

 as gossamer, which often floats by us on a fine August day, 

 sometimes in such quantities as to cover our clothes with 

 its silvery threads. Those who are abroad in the early 

 morning will, at times, find the meadows interlaced with 

 innumerable thin lines crossing and recrossing each other, 

 covered with dewdrops sparkling like diamonds in the 

 sunshine. These gossamer threads are produced by small 

 spiders, not always of the same species, but why so pro- 

 duced has never been quite satisfactorily answered. Some 

 suppose they are formed for the collection of the dew, 

 which the little animals eagerly drink ; others, for the 

 purpose of wafting themselves into the upper air, to seek 

 for the small insects to be found there. The single threads 

 are often so fine as to be almost imperceptible. The 

 spiders which produce them shoot them out from their 

 spinnerets, and being caught by the ascending current of 

 heated air, are borne up, taking the spider with them. 

 That careful observer of nature, Gilbert White, in a letter 

 to Daines Barrington, says : " Every day in fine weather, 

 in autumn chiefly, do I see these 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 I did not assist it with my breath ; so that these little 



