rt of the down, three hundred feet above
his fields, he found the webs in appearance still as much above him as
before; still descending into sight in a constant succession, and
twinkling in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most incurious.

Neither 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 appearances, 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 off 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.

LETTER XXIV.

SELBORNE, _Aug._ 15_th_, 1775.

Dear Sir,--There is a wonderful spirit of sociality in the brute
creation, independent of sexual attachment: the congregating of
gregarious birds in the winter is a rem