THE LADIES’ MAGAZINE OF GARDENING. 
81 
heedless fly which she fastens on, and both falling to the ground together, 
when the fly is quickly despatched. This spider makes no web, trusting 
entirely to what chance throws in her way. 
Besides domestic, field, and tree spiders, there is one which lives on the 
banks of rivers, and seeks its food in the mud at the bottom, by diving in 
a globule of air formed by itself; or else the animal is clothed with a 
kind of down or hair which repels the water, for when submerged, it 
looks as if covered with a coat of silver. Another is almost an inhabitant 
of the air ; at least for the principal part of the time we know anything 
of it. This is the gossamer spider, which is one of the smallest, not 
being larger than a grain of millet. Of the economy of these insects we 
know but little: but their breeding place is probably dry ground, under 
trees, and hedges, or even on the surface of open fields and plains; 
because when the weather is favourable for their flight, they seem to rise 
from the surface of the ground everywhere, as well as from trees and 
hedges. They weave no web, unless it be bags for their eggs ; but they 
never travel or move from place to place without leaving a thread behind, 
which serves as a tether, as well as gives a degree of buoyancy to the 
insect. In taking their aerial journey from any elevation, as trees, &c. 
their flight or movement is easily accounted for, because any current of 
air bears them along with it; but in the calmest weather they can rise 
into the air without other exertion than spreading out their arm and legs, 
as if to form a kind of parachute, and are quickly out of sight. In 
seeing them thus rising from the surface of ploughed land, or from the 
points of the stubble in the same field, I have often doubted whether it 
might not be the radiation of heat from the surface that carried the 
insects aloft. Some naturalists are of opinion that this insect has the 
power of raising itself into the air by electrical agency ; and by the same 
means, propelling its threads in any direction, even against the wind. I 
have watched these insects for hours together, and seen them launch 
themselves into the air, and be borne away before the wind out of sighL 
I have also seen one of them remain on the point of a shoot with its head 
to the wind, and then ejecting a thread from its spinners, allow it to be 
carried away by the wind till it was many yards in length ; and then 
quitting hold of the tree, be carried away swinging at the end of the 
flying thread up in the air. 
From the vast quantity of gossamer threads which are sometimes seen 
covering stubble fields, hedges, woods, in short the whole face of the 
country, as well as endless clouds of them flying high in the air, some 
idea may be formed of the incalculable number of the spiders whence this 
light and fugitive matter proceeds. It is not known whether, like so 
VOL. i.—NO. III. 
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