OP SELBORNE. 287 



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 evapora- 

 tion 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 locomo- 

 tive power without the use of wings, and to move in the 

 air faster than the air itself. 



LETTER XXIV 1 . 



TO THE SAME. 

 DEAR SIR, SELBORNE, Aug. 15, 1775. 



THERE is a wonderful spirit of sociality in the brute 

 creation, independent of sexual attachment : the con- 

 gregating of gregarious birds in the winter is a remark- 

 able instance. 



Many horses, though quiet with company, will not 

 stay one minute in a field by themselves : the strongest 



1 Barrington has inserted this Letter in his Miscellanies, p. 251 ; pre- 

 facing it thus : " I shall here, on this head, subjoin part of a letter which 

 I have received from my often-mentioned correspondent, the Rev. Mr. 

 White, of Selborne, in Hampshire." E. T. B. 



