OCTOBEK 215 



Shipley has described the process with his customary 

 lucidity : 



' Only a small portion of gossamer flakes are found to con- 

 tain spiders, though minute insects are constantly to be seen 

 entangled in them. They are not formed in the air, as was 

 supposed long after their true origin was known ; but the 

 threads emitted by multitudes of spiders in their various 

 spinning operations have been intermingled and carried away 

 by light currents of air, and on a still warm day in spring or 

 autumn, when the newly-hatched spider-broods swarm, the 

 atmosphere is often full of them.' l 



The problem of gossamer was sifted to a solution by 

 John Blackwall. 2 He proved by experiment that the 

 little spiders required the assistance of a gentle t current 

 of air to send out the thread from their spinnerets : 



'Having procured a small branched twig, I fixed it up- 

 right in an earthen vessel containing water, its base being 

 immersed in the liquid, and upon it I placed several of the 

 spiders that produce gossamer. Whenever the insects 3 thus 

 circumstanced were exposed to a current of air, either 

 naturally or artificially produced, they directly turned the 

 thorax towards the quarter whence it came, even when it 

 was so slight as scarcely to be perceptible, and elevating the 

 abdomen, they emitted from their spinners a small portion 

 of glutinous matter, which was instantly carried out in a line 

 consisting of four finer ones, with a velocity equal or nearly 

 so to that with which the air moved. The spiders, in the 

 next place, carefully ascertained whether their lines had 

 become firmly attached to any object by pulling at them 



1 Cambridge Natural History, vol. iv. p. 342. 



2 Died in 1881 ; author of History of the Spiders of Great Britain 

 aiid Ireland, 1861-4. 



3 A slip. Spiders are not insects. 



