OF SELBOENE. 213 



ling in the sun, so aa 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 cobweblike appear- 

 ances, 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. 

 Kay], 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. Lalt 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. 



