I have seen Gossamer in this form at other times before and since, but in the likeness of a snow-shower I never saw it except on that occasion, and, if I recollect aright, the same enormous shower of Gossamer was observed to extend as far as Liverpool.

What induced these millions of spiders to go up at the same time, of course I do not know, and can only suppose that they went up to feed; but, as I have said previously, I never saw one of this species preying upon anything.  The idea that they go aloft to kill the Furia Infernalis is too fanciful to deserve credit.  Who knows whether the Furia Infernalis is anything else than a murderous Mrs. Harris—­at all events, who has seen one, and what was it like?

I suppose they are true sportsmen, and disdaining to take their fish in nets, they, like thorough brothers of the angle, fish only with fine gut.

Gilbert White noticed one of these showers of Gossamer, and as his account is very interesting, I quote it.  He says that on the 21st of September, 1741, intent upon field diversions, he rose before daybreak, but on going out he found the whole face of the country covered with a thick coat of cobweb drenched with dew, as if two or three setting-nets had been drawn one over the other.  When his dogs attempted to hunt, their eyes were blinded and hoodwinked, so much that they were obliged to lie down and scrape themselves.  This appearance was followed by a most lovely day.  About 9 A.M. a shower of these webs (formed not of single threads, but of perfect flakes, some near an inch broad and five or six long) was observed falling from very elevated regions, which continued without interruption during the whole of the day, and they fell with a velocity which showed they were considerably heavier than the atmosphere.  When the most elevated station in the country where this was observed was ascended, the webs were still to be seen descending from above, and twinkling like stars in the sun, so as to draw the attention of the most incurious.  The flakes of the web on this occasion hung so thick upon the hedges and trees, that basketsful might have been collected.  No one doubts (he observes) but that these webs are the production of small spiders.

These aerial spiders are of two sizes, although of the same colour and general appearance; they are probably male and female.  At all events they do not vary in size more than other species of spiders when the sexes differ.

Has it been observed by naturalists that spiders eat their own webs?  A large one that I used to feed when I was a lad with wasps, humble bees, and flesh-flies, used to do so occasionally.  These insects were so strong that they often ruined the web in their efforts to escape, and the spider, quite aware of the rough customers it had to deal with, would often coil a cable of many folds round them before venturing to seize them with its mandibles.  It would, if the web was ruined by the struggles of the insect, deliberately gorge it, which I accounted for by supposing that unless it did so it would not be able to secrete a sufficient supply of material to enable it to spin another.