1 86 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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.* 



* Every sportsman must have noticed the appearance indicated in the preceding letter. 

 Lister, as above referred to, has some very good observations in his Latin letter to Rayth ; 

 and at later periods it has been noticed and commented upon by various observers and 

 entomologists. Blackwall, in a paper in the Transactions of the Linnxan Society, 

 observed, that it was principally young and immature spiders that undertook the 

 excursions, and thinks that they are borne upwards by an ascending current of rarified 

 air acting on their slender lines. He does not agree with those who think that the flight 

 is influenced by electricity. Mr. John Murray,in his " Researches in Natural History." 

 records several experiments ; and on one occasion the thread was discharged to the 

 ceiling of a room above eight feet high. On another occasion a spider darted its thread 

 perfectly horizontal, and in length fully ten feet, and the angle of vision being particularly 

 favourable, we observed an extraordinary aura, or atmosphere, round the thread, which 

 we cannot doubt was "electric." Mr. Murray afterwards explains various phenomena, 

 and arrives at the conclusion that electricity is much connected with them ; he found that 

 when a conductor was brought near one of the floccular balls they are considerably 

 deflected from the perpendicular, and that when a stick of incited sealing-wax was 

 brought near the thread of suspension it seemed to be repelled. Mr. Murray quotes 

 Selborne, last paragraph of Letter XXI II., in regard to the spider shooting out a thread 

 in a calm atmosphere, and observes, " This phenomenon it has been our fortune frequently 

 to observe," and he arrives at the conclusion that the electric or non-electric state of 

 the atmosphere is intimately connected with the shooting of the thread, and the ascent 

 of the spider. We have often seen hundreds of acres covered with this gossamer web 

 sparkling with the morning dew, and the little creatures must have been exceedingly 

 numerous, many being seen, and we regret never having attempted any computation, but 

 no doubt this autumn will give opportunity to any resident in the country, and getting out 

 of doors early. Starck says that twenty or thirty are often found upon a single stubble, 

 and that he collected in half-an-hour two thousand, and could easily have got twice as 

 many had he wished it. 



