How Animals Work. 



turesome race, widely distributed in many lands and 

 climates, but the majority very closely agreeing in 

 the general outline of their habits, though varying 

 greatly in size, and always increasing in stature the 

 nearer that we approach the Tropics. But whether 

 we are in tropical South America in the forests of the 

 Amazon region, or at home in England, we shall always 

 find the little gossamer spiders, delighting to go off on 

 aeronautical expeditions, apparently without the least 

 regard or concern as to their ultimate destination. 

 Not infrequently this apparent restlessness bears them 

 far afield and sometimes far out to sea sometimes, I 

 believe, right across the Strait of Dover; for on more 

 than one occasion hundreds of them have been seen 

 coming aboard in mid-Channel, the threads of their 

 silken air-rafts catching on the spars and rigging of 

 the cross-Channel steamers. 



Darwin in the course of his voyage round the world 

 saw these little venturesome aeronauts come aboard 

 his ship on several occasions, and has given the follow- 

 ing interesting account of the incident : (t< On several 

 occasions, when the Beagle has been within the mouth 

 of the Plata, the rigging has been coated with the web 

 of the gossamer spider. One day (November i, 1832) 

 I paid particular attention to this subject. The weather 

 had been fine and clear, and in the morning the air 

 was full of patches of the flocculent web, as on an 

 autumnal day in England. The ship was sixty miles 

 distant from the land, in the direction of a steady though 

 light breeze. Vast numbers of a small spider, about 

 one-tenth of an inch in length and of a dusky red colour, 

 were attached to the webs. There must have been, 



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