132 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW-WORKERS 



Gossamer 



He tells how a spider while fabricating her web may' 

 suddenly cease working, and turning the hinder end of 

 her body towards the wind, dart out a thread, which in 

 a moment attains a length of some fathoms ; at last the 

 spider leaps into the air, and the thread carries her away. 

 Cases are quoted of both old and young spiders sailing 

 on their threads ; some of the threads are not simple, 

 but " snarled," and form woolly locks. ^ The following 

 passage from a letter to Ray, Jan. 1670, has become 

 well known by frequent quotation. " As to the height 

 they [gossamer spiders] are able to mount, it is much 

 beyond that of trees, or even the highest steeples in 

 England. This last October the sky here upon a day 

 was very full of webs ; I forthwith mounted to the top 

 of the highest steeple in the Minster, and could thence 

 discern them yet exceeding high above me." 



Ichneumons 

 Lister was clear that the ichneumons bred in cater- 

 pillars were the offspring of ichneumon-parents. He 

 had seen ichneumons lay their "young" [eggs] in 

 the very egg-cake of spiders, or pierce galls to reach 

 the maggots within. Goedart had said, in accordance 

 with prevalent belief, that an animal may be generated 

 of a fat juice, but Lister corrects him : — " There is but 

 one way," he says, " that of animal parents." ^ 



hisect Hairs 

 " Naked caterpillars are a more acceptable food 

 to birds than such as are hairy, as I have found by 



iPM. Trans. No. 50 (1669). 



2 Translation of Goedart on Insects, pp. 5, 64. Lister made the mistake 

 of supposing that the piercing instrument of the ichneumon was the tongue. 



