of Selborne 165 



How far this wonderful shower extended would be 

 difficult to say ; but we know that it reached Bradley, 

 Selborne, and Alresford, three places wliich lie in a 

 sort of a triangle, the shortest of whose sides is about 

 eight miles in extent. 



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 u{)on 

 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, 

 300 feet above his fields, he found the webs in appear- 

 ance 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 super- 

 stitious 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 supposilif)n, 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 tlic region 

 where clouds are formed : and if the spiders have a 

 power of coiling and thickening their webs in the air, as 



