254 The Natural History of Selborne 



called gossamer, is, that, strange and superstitious 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 regions where clouds are formed : 

 and if the spiders have a power of coiling and thickening their 

 webs in the air, as Dr. Lister says they have [see his Letters to Mr. 

 Ray], then, when they were become heavier than the air, they must 

 fall. 



Every day in fine weather, in autumn chiefly, do I see those 

 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 that I did not assist it with my breath. 

 So that these little crawlers seem to have, while mounting, some 

 locomotive power without the use of wings, and to move in the air 

 faster than the air itself. 



