upon the
clearest of all streams, fringed with the wildest of birch woods, and
backed with the green hills of Ettricke Forest. The rest you must
imagine. Altogether, the place destined to receive so many pilgrimages
contains within itself beauties not unworthy of its associations. Few
poets ever inhabited such a place; none, ere now, ever created one.
It is the realization of dreams: some Frenchman called it, I hear,
"a romance in stone and lime."

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY

_Aerial Voyages of Spiders_.

The number of the aeronautic spiders occasionally suspended in the
atmosphere, says Mr. Murray, I believe to be almost incredible, could
we ascertain their amount. I was walking with a friend on the 9th, and
noticed that there were four of these insects on his hat, at the moment
there were three on my own; and from the rapidity with which they
covered its surface with their threads, I cannot doubt that they are
chiefly concerned in the production of that tissue which intercepts the
dew, and which, illuminated by the morning sun, "glitters with gold,
and with rubies and sapphires." Indeed, I have noticed that, when the
frequent descent of the aeronautic spider was determined, a newly rolled
turnip field was, in a few hours, overspread by a carpet of their
threads. It may be remarked that our little aeronaut is very greedy of
moisture, though abstemious in other respects. Its food is perhaps
peculiar, and only found in the superior regions of the sky. Like the
rest of its tribe, it is doubtless carnivorous, and may subserve some
highly important purpose in the economy of Providence; such, for
instance, as the destruction of that truly formidable, though almost
microscopically minute insect, the Furia infernalis, whose wounds are
stated to be mortal. Its existence has been indeed questioned, but by
no means disapproved; that, and some others, injurious to man, or to
the inferior creation, may be its destined prey, and thus our little
aeronaut, unheeded by the common eye, may subserve an important good.

Mr. Bowman, F.L.S. says, "We arrested several of these little aeronauts
in their flight, and placed them on the brass gnomon of the sundial, and
had the gratification to see them prepare for, and recommence, their
aerial voyage. Having crawled about for a short time, to reconnoitre,
they turned their abdomens from the current of air, and elevated them
almost perpendicularly,