260 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



as young creatures tend to do, from the parental home, where 

 there is no longer room for them. It may be that the pinch 

 of hunger is making itself felt. It may be, on the other hand, 

 that there is an element of play and even adventure in the 

 business. We use the word "adventure" advisedly, for 

 spiders are alert, intelligent, original, individualistic creatures, 

 very different from ants and bees, and other oversocialised 

 creatures of instinctive routine. Once more, it is possible 

 that the ballooning may be, to some extent, like letting off 

 steam ; it may be that certain conditions induce an over- 

 production of silk ; this has to be got rid of, and some spiders 

 get rid of it in a highly original way. But we are not 

 trying to obscure our admission that we do not know the 

 biological significance of gossamer. 



In any case, the extraordinary beauty of gossamer remains 

 a fact. Every alert person who has seen a long stretch of 

 golf-course, or acres of ploughed land, or a piece of moor, 

 or half a mile of hedgerow covered with gossamer, must 

 have admired the sight. The admiration grows when the 

 gossamer is bediamonded with dew or silvered with the frost, 

 or when the sun makes rainbows among it. It is one of the 

 most beautiful things in the world ; and when the threads 

 along the ground sparkle and vibrate, the earth seems to be 

 quivering, like a living thing, as far as the eye can reach. 

 It seems like an emblem of the intricacy of the threads in the 

 web of life. It recalls insistently Goethe's famous words 

 about Nature " She moves and works above and beneath, 

 working and weaving, an endless motion, birth and death, 

 an infinite ocean, a changeful web, a glowing life." 



