THE EARTH-CLOUD 



the earth over which it hangs in long lines. Above 

 this shroud, perhaps, is clear air, and above this 

 again, near the tree-tops, a long, thin line of stratus, 

 almost stiffly straight. It has little beauty then of 

 form, and none of colour, but, creeping over the land- 

 scape at dusk, it is powerfully attractive to watch. 

 Moved in the calm evening air from spot to spot 

 by agencies of which we are not conscious, it is 

 ghost-like : and of all classes of cloud it seems the 

 filmiest. 



Gossamer 



Not only in the early autumn do the little spiders 

 shoot their silky threads into the air, and cover the 

 ground with their network, millions on millions of 

 miles of gossamer, in substance so fine as to surpass 

 the very air in lightness. I have seen the stubble- 

 fields in the early winter sun shimmering with these 

 glossy lines. One November day, which brought 

 out the gnats for their dance in column, showed, too, 

 the earth spread with the gossamer. If the dancing 

 gnats in a small district, a parish, a single farm even, 

 are to human comprehension infinite, so are the 

 lines of the gossamer spiders. I suppose that if the 

 threads alone that network the fields of one district 

 on a favouring autumn day could be joined, they 

 would make a line long enough to go round England, 

 perhaps to go round it several times over ; and this is 

 x 305 



