ARANEID.i: — TRVE SPIDERS. 349 



How part is spun in silJcrn threads, and clings, 

 Entangled in the grass, in ffluei/ strings.'^ 



Henry More ^ho mentions this old belief; but suspected, 

 however, the true origin and use of the filmy threads: 



As liglit and thin as cohicehs that do fly 

 In the blue air caused by th' autumnal sun. 

 That boils the dew, that on the earth doth lie ; 

 May seem this whitish rag then is the scum : 

 Unless that wiser men mak"t the field-spider s loom.^ 



Jamicson, in his Scottish Dictionary, gives sun-dew icehs 

 as a name given in the South of Scotland to the gossamer. 



The Swedes call a cobweb dicaergsnaet, from dwaerg, a 

 species of malevolent fairy or demon ; very ingenious, and 

 supposed often to assume the appearance of a Spider, and 

 to form these nets. The peasants of that country say, 

 Jorden naetjar sig, "the earth covers itself with a net," 

 when the whole surface of the ground is covered with gos- 

 samer, which, it is commonly believed, indicates the seed- 

 time.^ 



Yoss, in a note on his Luise (iii. IT), says that the 

 popular belief in Germany is, that the gossamers are woven 

 by the Dwarfs. Keightley thinks the word gossamer is a 

 corruption of gorse, or goss saiiujt, i.e. the samyt, or finely- 

 woven silken web that lies on the gorse or furze. '^ 



A learned man and good natural philosopher, and one of 

 the first Fellows of the Royal Society, Robert Hooke. the 

 author of Micrograph ia, gravely remarked in his scientific 

 disquisition on the gossamer, that it "was not unlikely, but 

 those great white ctouds, that appear all the summer time, 

 may be of the same substance !! "^ 



The following well-authenticated incident is told liy Tur- 

 ner as having occurred when he was a young practitioner: 

 A certain young woman was accustomed, when she went 



1 Blackmore, Prince Arthur. 



- Quot. in the Athenseum, v. 126. 



•'» Jamieson's Sent. Diet., iv. 133. 



4 Keightley 's Fairy Mythol., p. 514. 



5 Microgr., p. 202. It has been objected, say Kirby and Spence, 

 to the excellent primitive writer, Clemens IU)manus, that he believed 

 the absurd fable of the phoenix. But surely this may be allowed 

 for in him, who was no naturalist, when a scientitic natural philoso- 

 pher could believe that the clouds are made of Spiders' web!— 7/1- 

 irod., ii. 331, note. 



