OF SELBORNE 189 



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, 

 300 feet above his fields, he found the webs in appear- 

 ance still as much above him as before ; still descending 

 into sight in a constant succession, and twinkling in the 

 sun, so as to draw tlie 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 super- 

 stitious as the notions about them were formerly, nobody 

 in these days doubts but that tliey 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 region 

 where clouds are formed : and if tlie 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. 



