OF SELBUBNE, 
213 
ling in tlie sun, so as to draw tlie attention of tlie most 
incurious. 
JN'eitlier 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. 
Ray], 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 oflp from your finger if you will take them into 
your hand. Last 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. 
