BALLOONING SPIDERS 1 19 
neighbors, as he ran cross-eyed over the meadow, 
were bewailing the loss of his reason : 
" The spider, as she was raised from the perch, 
had her head downward. She immediately and 
swiftly reverses her position, clambers up her 
floating threads, at the same time throwing out a 
few filaments, which are cunningly twisted into a 
sort of basket into which the feet can rest. Now 
the upper legs grasp the lower of the ray, and the 
spinnerets, being released therefrom, are again set 
to work, and with amazing rapidity spin out a sec- 
ond and similar ray, which floats up behind her. 
Thus our aeronaut's balloon is complete, and she 
sits in the middle of it, drifting whither the breeze 
may carry her. She is not wholly at the mercy 
of the wind, however, for if she wishes to alight, 
she can gather the threads into a little white ball 
under her jaws ; as they gradually shorten, the 
spider, having nothing to buoy her, sinks by her 
own weight, and the striking upon some elevated 
object, or falling upon the grass, makes her feel 
at home." 
Having once alighted, the little pioneer imme- 
diately sets up house-keeping for herself, and the 
locality of its web in a year hence will doubtless 
be the scene of a similar balloon ascension, multi- 
plied perhaps a thousandfold, from the neighbor- 
hood of a tuft of eggs somewhere concealed 
among the herbage perhaps a brown, cocoon- 
