BALLOONING SPIDERS II9 



neighbors, as he ran cross-eyed over the meadow, 

 were bewailing the loss of his reason : 



" The spider, as she was raised from the perch, 

 had her head downward. She immediately and 

 swiftly reverses her position, clambers up her 

 floating threads, at the same time throwing out a 

 few filaments, which are cunningly twisted into a 

 sort of basket into which the feet can rest. Now 

 the upper legs grasp the lower of the ray, and the 

 spinnerets, being released therefrom, are again set 

 to work, and with amazing rapidity spin out a sec- 

 ond and similar ray, which floats up behind her. 

 Thus our aeronaut's balloon is complete, and she 

 sits in the middle of it, drifting whither the breeze 

 may carry her. She is not wholly at the mercy 

 of the wind, however, for if she wishes to alight, 

 she can gather the threads into a little white ball 

 under her jaws ; as they gradually shorten, the 

 spider, having nothing to buoy her, sinks by her 

 own weight, and the striking upon some elevated 

 object, or falling upon the grass, makes her feel 

 at home." 



Having once alighted, the little pioneer imme- 

 diately sets up house-keeping for herself, and the 

 locality of its web in a year hence will doubtless 

 be the scene of a similar balloon ascension, multi- 

 plied perhaps a thousandfold, from the neighbor- 

 hood of a tuft of eggs somewhere concealed 

 among the herbage — perhaps a brown, cocoon- 



