526 
SPIDER. 
and material as to be considerably more Weighty than 
air, and to descend with precipitation, is a matter be- 
yond my skill. If I may be allowed to hazard a sup- 
position, 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 form- 
ed ; 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 ; 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 
was stirring ; and I am sure I did not assist it with 
my breath. So that these little crawlers seem to 
have, while mounting, some locomotive power with- 
out the use of wings, and to move in the air faster 
than the air itself.’* 
As a contrast to this aerial species we may be al- 
lowed to mention the water spider, Aranea aquatica , 
Linn., which is generally found in very clear ponds, 
where it spins itself a web and passes its time with 
as much freedom as the rest. The body of this 
