190 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
At the second of tliose places there was a gentleman (for 
whose veracity and intelligent turn we have the greatest venera- 
tion) who observed it the moment he got 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 thistledown, 
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 appearance still as much above 
him as before ; still descending into sight in a constant succes- 
sion, and twinkling in the sun, so as to draw the attention of 
tlie most incurious. 
ISTeither 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 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 wliy 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 evapora- 
tion, 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 were become heavier 
than the air, they must fall.^ 
1 One day when the air was full of such gossamers. Dr. Lister relates that 
he mounted to the highest part of York Cathedral and found the gossamer 
webs still far above hira. 
" Its sone some wonder at the cause of thunder, 
On ebbe and flode, on gossamer and mist, 
And on. all things till that the cause is Mdst." — Chaucer. 
