GOSSAMER 289 



miah Grew as secretary of the Royal Society in 1677, 

 and published a wonderful illustrated book called Micro- 

 graphia (see p. 173), wrote of gossamer. He was so far 

 from recognising its true nature that he says : " It is not 

 unlikely that those great white clouds which appear all 

 the summer time may be of the same substance." Yet 

 it is now a simple and certain fact of observation that 

 the countless threads in question are the work of minute 

 spiders ! 



The pretty name " gossamer " has puzzled the etymo- 

 logists and led to some far-fetched suggestions. That 

 favoured by the authority of the great Oxford dictionary 

 of the English language is that it is a corruption of 

 " Go-summer," because gossamer appears in autumn and 

 is associated with St. Martin's summer. This is like 

 saying that the word "cray-fish" refers to fish that live 

 in a "cray" or brook, instead of deriving it from the 

 French word farevisse. The Germans call gossamer 

 Sommenveben. But the Latin word for cotton \sgossypium, ; 

 and there is an Italian word, gossampino, which occurs 

 in an English form, gossampine, in the sixteenth century, 

 and means a kind of silk or cotton obtained from the 

 fluffy hairs of a plant called bombax. We also find 

 " gossamer " spelt " gossamire " in English of that date ; 

 and it seems to me most likely that an Italian word 

 gossamira, signifying " fairy-cotton " or " magic goose- 

 down," is the origin of our word. 



There are 500 different kinds of spider carefully 

 described as occurring in the British Islands, and about 

 2000 others from remoter regions. Precisely which of 

 them forms the " gossamer " of our meadows it is difficult 

 to say, as all have the habit of secreting a viscid fluid from 

 one or two pairs of projecting spinning knobs or stalks, 

 which are seen at the hinder end of the body (Figs. 48, 49, 

 and 50). The viscid fluid is poured out by a great number 



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