NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 137 



continual succession of fresh flakes falling into his sight, and twinkling 

 like stars as they turned their sides towards the sun. 



How far this wonderful shower extended would be difficult to say ; 

 but we know that it reached Bradley, Selborne, and Alresford, three 

 places which 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 upon 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, three hundred feet above his fields, he found the webs in 

 appearance 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 superstitious 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 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 breath. So that these little crawlers seem to 

 have, while mounting, some locomotive power without the use of wings, 

 and to move in the air faster than the air itself.* 



* Every sportsman must have noticed the appearance indicated in the preceding 

 letter. Lister, as above referred to, has some very good observations in his Latin 



