SHOWERS OF GOSSAMER 257 



far often, doubtless, too far. Thus Darwin noted that 

 huge numbers were carried on board the Beagle when it 

 was sixty miles off shore. There are other spiders, how- 

 ever, which cannot make long journeys, and do not rise 

 high off the ground. Professor Miall has observed that 

 gossamer in the air is always preceded, as well as followed, 

 by gossamer on the ground. A further study of gossamer- 

 making British spiders is much to be desired. 



In his fine work on Spiders (1890), Dr. M'Cook 

 notes the interesting fact that the essential explanation 

 of gossamer was discovered in 1716 by a boy of twelve, 

 Jonathan Edwards, who afterwards became famous in 

 other connections as an author, for instance, of a treatise 

 on The Freedom of the Will. He saw and figured the 

 " flying spiders/* and seems to have clearly understood 

 that the aeronaut was supported by the silk, and that it 

 was borne by currents. " If there be not web more than 

 enough just to counterbalance the gravity of the spider, 

 the spider, together with the web, will hang in equilibrio, 

 neither ascending nor descending otherwise than as the 

 air moves; but if there is so much web that its greater 

 rarity shall more than equal the greater density, they will 

 ascend till the air is so thin that the spider and web 

 together are just of an equal weight with so much air." 

 Which is not amiss for a boy of twelve. Nor is his note 

 on the silk itself : " Seeing that the web, while it is in the 

 spider, is a certain cloudy liquor with which that great 

 bottle tail of theirs is filled, which immediately, upon its 

 being exposed to the air, turns to a dry substance, and 

 exceedingly rarifies and extends itself." 



Some details of one of the most remarkable phenomena 



in Nature have been furnished by trustworthy observers 



and experimenters, who have followed up the excellent 



beginning made by the boy Jonathan Edwards. Gilbert 



'7 



