THE GOSSAMER SPIDER. 491 



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 

 jso 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*, then, when they become 

 heavier than the air, they must fall. 



" Every day in fine weather, in autumn chiefly, 

 do I see these spiders shooting out their webs and 

 mounting aloft : they will go off from your finger, 

 if you take them into your hand. Last summer 

 one alighted on my book as I was reading in the 

 parlour j and, running to the top of a 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 



Letters to Mr. Ray, 



