and if some of the feathers had been caught and
identified by a man wise in birds, the shower
might have been proved to be characteristic of
the land of water-fowl. Showers of feathers, it
has been remarked by a competent authority,
are by no means so rare as some people suppose.

Spiders make showers. The young naturalist
who wishes to distinguish himself by making
original observations on known animals, and by
discovering unknown species, should turn his
attention to spiders. Only last June, on one of
the few warm days we had in that month, while
seated on a bench on the esplanade of Brighton,
I saw spiders flying in a way which has never
been believed yet. Some half score pairs of
spiders alighted upon the coats of myself and two
gentlemen while we were talking, as everybody
talks, and wondering, as everybody wonders,
how and when the war of North and South in
America will end. They were spiders of a sort
I had never seen before, small, with black bodies
and grey abdomens. In fact, the first warm
day of a cold summer had brought them out
with hosts of rather small beetles. I caught
several of these black and grey spiders because
I was surprised to see them pass from my coat
sleeves to the coats of the gentlemen sitting to
leeward of me, as easily as house flies (Musca
domestica) or ladybirds (Coccinella septempunctata)
might have done. When I caught them,
they let themselves down from my fingers by
spinning threads very rapidly, as many other
spiders have done when I have caught them.
But these very lively black and grey spiders
showed me tricks I had never seen or heard of.
I expected them to do like all other spiders,
and let themselves down to the ground before
unloosing their rope. They escaped in a far
cleverer way. When the pendant thread was
some eight inches long, its course changed from
vertical to horizontal; for, the spider rose on
the current of the breeze until it was on a level
with my finger, the line lengthening all the
while. When the line was about ten inches
long, the spider, by means unknown to me,
detached the string at the point of junction with
my finger, and sailed away upon the stream of
air. I caught three of these spiders, and every
one of them performed this feat, to the astonishment
of myself and the gentlemen sitting beside
me. Now, this is not a new observation, but it
is a confirmation of an observation long
disbelieved or disregarded. As long ago as 1775, Mr.
Gilbert White, of Selborne, writing to Mr. Daines
Barrington, said, " nobody in these days doubts
that floating cobwebs 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, and render themselves
lighter than air." But why these wingless insects
should on special days take wondrous aërial
excursions was a matter beyond his skill. " 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 will take them up into your hand. Last
summer one alighted on my book as I was reading
in the parlour; and running up to the top of
the page, and shooting out a web, took his
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." These feats must be accomplished
by means of special faculties. They must be
possessed of the knack by means of which boys
attach and detach leather suckers from stones.
Moreover, they must possess a far more extra-
ordinary faculty; they must know how to adjust
their own specific gravity to the current of air
upon which they float. Dr. Lister said long
ago that spiders have a power of coiling and
thickening their webs in the air; and this power
has been deemed the explanation of the gossamer
showers.

Chaucer says:

As sore some wonder at the cause of thunder
On ebb and flode, on gosomer, and mist;
And on all things 'till that the cause is wist.

Thunder, ebb and flood, and mist, are now
pretty well understood, and even the mystery
of gossamer is no longer referred to the
superstitious imaginations of our forefathers. Yet the
whole cause is not wist. We wot not how the
spiders cast off their holdfasts and scud away,
nor how they adjust themselves for flight, and
regulate their movements; we only know that
they do it. No one knows at present why,
on particular days, flakes of gossamer should
fall so fast upon the trees and hedges, that
a diligent collector might gather basketfuls.
Gilbert White, being on a visit to a friend and
intent on field-sports, rose before daybreak on
the morning of the 21st September, 1741, and,
on coming into the enclosures, found the stubbles
and clover-grounds matted all over with a
thick coat of cobweb, in the meshes thereof a
copious and heavy dew, so plentiful that the
whole face of the country seemed as if it were
covered with two or three setting-nets drawn
one over another. When the dogs attempted
to hunt, they, blinded and hoodwinked, were
obliged to lie down and scrape the cobwebs from
their faces with their fore-feet. As the morning
advanced, the day became bright, calm, cloudless,
warm, one of the loveliest of autumn days,
until about nine o'clock, when a shower of
cobwebs began to fall from the skies, which
continued without interruption until the close of
the day. These cobwebs were not single threads,
but flakes or rags, which, as they fell, twinkled
as they turned their sides to the sun. They
were about an inch broad by five or six long,
and considerably heavier than the air, as they fell
with some velocity. This shower was of a
surprising extent, reaching Bradley, Selborne, and
Alresford, three places lying in a sort of triangle,
the shortest side being about eight miles in
length. At Selborne, a gentleman, thinking he
could get above the shower, rode three hundred