NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 185 



At the second of those places there was a gentleman (for whose 

 veracity and intelligent turn we have the greatest veneration) who 

 observed it the moment he got abroad ; but concluded that, as 

 soon as he came upon the hill above his house, where he took his 

 morning rides, he should be higher than this meteor, which he 

 imagined might have been blown, like thistle-down from the 

 common above : but, to his great astonishment, when he rode to 

 the most elevated part of the down, three hundred feet above his 

 fields, he found the webs in appearance still as much above him as 

 before ; still descending into sight in a constant succession, and 

 twinkling in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most 

 incurious. 



Neither before nor after was any such fall observed ; but on this 

 day the flakes hung in the trees and hedges so thick that a diligent 

 person sent out might have gathered baskets full. 



The remark that I shall make on these cobweb-like appearances, 

 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 pariour ; 

 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. 



