270 



MOTIONS OF INSECTS. 



same substance" 1 So liable are even the wisest men to error, 

 when leaving fact and experiment, they follow the guidance of 

 fancy. Some French naturalists have supposed that these 

 Jils de la Vierge, as they are called, are composed of the cot- 

 tony matter in which the eggs of the Coccus of the vine ( C. 

 Vitis) are enveloped. 2 In a country abounding in vineyards 

 this supposition would not be absurd ; but in one like Bri- 

 tain, in which the vine is confined to the fruit-garden, and 

 the Coccus seldom seen out of the conservatory, it will not 

 at all account for the phenomenon. What will you say, if 

 I tell you that these webs (at least many of them) are air- 

 balloons, and that the aeronauts are not 



" Lovers who may bestride the gossamer 

 That idles in the wanton summer air, 

 And yet not fall," 



but spiders, who, long before Montgolfier, nay, ever since the 

 creation, have been in the habit of sailing through the fields 

 of ether in these air-light chariots ! This seems to have been 

 suspected long ago by Henry Moore, who says, 



" As light and thin as cobwebs that do fly 

 In the blew air, caus'd by the autumnal sun, 

 That boils the dew that on the earth doth lie, 

 May seem this whitish rag then is the scum ; 



Unless that wiser men makeH the field-spider's loom : " 3 



where he also alludes to the old opinion of scorched dew. 

 But the first naturalists who made this discovery appear to 

 have been Dr. Hulse and Dr. Martin Lister — the former 

 first observing that spiders shoot their webs into the air ; and 

 the latter, besides this, that they were carried upon them in 

 that element. 4 This last gentleman, in fine serene weather 

 in September, had noticed these webs falling from the 

 heavens, and in them discovered more than once a spider, 

 which he named the bird. On another occasion, whilst he 

 was watching the proceedings of a common spider, the animal, 

 suddenly turning upon its back and elevating its anus, 



1 Microgr. 202. It has been objected to an excellent primitive writer ( Clemens 

 Romanus), that he believed the absurd fable of the phoenix. But surely this 

 may be allowed for in him, who was no naturalist, when a scientific natural phi- 

 losopher could believe that the clouds are made of spiders' web ! 



2 Latreille, Hist Nat. xii. 388. 3 Quoted in the Athenceum, v. 126. 

 Ray's Letters, 36. 69. 



