NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 185 



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 con- 

 siderably more weighty than air, and to descend with 

 precipitation, is a matter beyond my skill. If I might be 

 allowed to hazard a supposition, 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 the regions where clouds are formed : and 

 if the spiders have a power of coiling and thickening 

 their webs in the air, as Dr. Lister says they have [see his 

 Letters to Mr. Ray], then, when they were become heavier 

 than the air, they must fall. 



Every day in fine weather, in autumn chiefly, do I see 

 those spiders shooting out their webs and mounting aloft : 

 they will go off from your finger if you will take them into 

 your hand. Last summer one alighted on my book as I 

 was reading in the parlour, and, running to the top of the 

 page, and shooting out a web, took its departure from 

 thence. But what I most wondered at was, that it went 

 off with considerable velocity in a place where no air was 

 stirring ; and I am sure that I did not assist it with my 



