pleasant to think that these were mooted points in the scientific circles of Greece in the days of the Stagyrite. There can, we think,' adds Mr. Murray, 'be no doubt naturally (rationally?) ' entertained, that spiders can project their threads in motionless air, peculiarly circumstanced.

،A ray of solar light, for instance, will do it ; and the insect will, in this case, sometimes dart out a thread many yards long, perfectly vertical; and, with the velocity of an arrow, and an ascent equally rapid, is lost in a twinkling to the eye of the observer. Mr. White has the following remark: "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 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 move faster than the air, in the air itself." This phenomenon, it has been our fortune frequently to observe. The phenomenon recorded by Mr. Blackwall on the 1st October, 1826, accompanied by "a profusion of shining lines," was observed when there was no wind stirring ;" and accordingly Mr. Rennie noticed, that a spider can produce a line when there was scarcely a breath of air."

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'The ascent of this apterous insect into the air, is a problem which very few have attempted to solve, and, from the difficulty attendant upon it, many have denied its possibility altogether. It seems to have puzzled Mr. White a good deal: however, the following supposition is hazarded:-" I should imagine," says he, "that those filmy threads, when first shot, might be entangled in the rising dew, and so draw 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, then, when they become heavier than the air, they must fall." Gay Lussac considers the ascent of clouds, in the regions of air, entirely ascribable to the impulse of ascending currents, arising from the difference of temperature between the surface of the earth and the atmosphere at great elevations. Mr. Blackwall assumes the same impulsion, as accessary to the flight of the spider; but the fact proves that clouds are replenished with electricity, and the sunbeam which impinges on them may be the medium of supply: besides, the floods of heat which descend to us in the sunbeams, would more than suffice to check or counteract these assumed emanations; and in the brightest sunshine, cœteris paribus, the ascent of our little aëronaut will be most rapid.'

Murray, pp. 46-48.

In proof that the spider's thread is not lighter than the atmosphere, the following facts are mentioned.

، Mr. White observed a remarkable phenomenon on the 21st of September, 1741. Early in the morning, the whole country was enveloped in a coat of cobweb, wet with dew. His dogs, on a shooting

excursion, were blinded by them. A delightful day succeeded; and at nine o'clock A.M., a shower of these webs fell, (not single threads, but formed of flakes,) some nearly an inch broad, and five or six inches long, and continued to fall during the entire day. Baskets full might have been collected from the hedges; and, from the velocity of their fall, it was evident they were considerably heavier than the medium through which they descended.

A phenomenon similar to that mentioned by Mr. White, was witnessed on the 16th of September, 1822, at Bewdley, in Worcestershire. Between the hours of 11 A.M. and 2 P.M. the whole atmosphere seemed to be a tissue of cobwebs, which continued to fall in great numbers, and in quick succession; the temperature was 72° F. Some of these were single, others branched filaments, occasionally from 40 to 50 feet in length! others were woolly films, or flocculi: some fell slowly, and others more rapidly. This was first noticed in the market-place at Bewdley; and, on repairing to the adjoining fields, we found the same phenomenon, and our clothes were most curiously invested with a network of spiders' threads. In a communication to the Rev. J. J. Freeman of Kidderminster, now a Missionary in Madagascar, we remarked this circumstance; and the following is an extract from his letter to us, dated 18th of September, 1822: "The fall of cobwebs was also observed here on Monday. A gentleman told me, he was obliged to wipe his face several times while walking in his garden about 12 or 1 o'clock, such quantities continued to fall on him." On the 19th of July, 1822, the yeomanry, at 1 o'clock P.M., were drawn up in the market-place at Kidderminster, to fire a feu-de-joie, which had the effect of bringing immense numbers of this spider from the aërial regions we picked up a considerable quantity from the pavement, when the yeomanry had withdrawn, and several took refuge on the table where we were reading, near the window of the hotel, then partly open.' Murray, pp. 34-36.

Besides this power of shooting its threads vertically, and mounting the air, the spider has a horizontal flight which is still more mysterious. In the entertaining volume on Insect Transformations, this property is briefly noticed. When spiders, even of con'siderable size, drop from a height, we have often', says the Writer, seen them swing out of the perpendicular without any apparent aid from the wind. It is highly probable, that this movement is effected by some internal apparatus analogous to the 'swim-bladder of fishes. They cannot, however, in this manner, move far.' (p. 398.)

But we have suffered our pen to be caught in a spider's web, from which we must now disentangle ourselves. We set out, in this article, with the intention of enumerating some few of the living wonders, familiar yet comparatively unobserved and unknown, with which, at this season, the fields and woods, the lawn and the pasture are teeming. But the spider has stopped us with its silken threads; and this one species of a single genus has detained us so long, that we must no further prosecute our intended

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excursion. Our object, perhaps, will be sufficiently answered, by this one specimen of the exhaustless field for observation and research which presents itself within the compass of a summer's stroll, or the still narrower boundary of a garden. The value of such publications as those before us, greatly consists in their being adapted to excite and form a taste for these most healthful and salutary studies, in the pursuit of which, as Sir J. E. Smith has expressed it, we may walk with God in the garden of creation, and hold converse with His providence'. This object, Mr. Murray has had particularly in view in his present volume, which, though bearing the marks of extensive scientific attainments, is of a miscellaneous and popular character. The Author is no friend to the affectation which would reduce the science of botany, or that of entomology, to a barbarous nomenclature and a dogmatic system. The physiology of plants or of insects, he deems not less deserving of attention. He is so old-fashioned too, as to think that, with all its faults and imperfections, the Linnæan nomenclature is far better than any thing we have obtained as a substitute; and he complains of the 'sectarism' of modern science as a source of infinite inconvenience and mischief. On the other hand, the tone in which scientific truths have recently been promulgated, is a change for the better; and the style and feeling 'displayed in such works as "Salmonia "," Journal of a Naturalist", and the "British Naturalist", remind us', it is remarked, of the good old times of Evelyn and Walton, Derham and Ray, and last, not least, the amiable philosopher of Selborne.' With these works, his own Researches deserve to class, as an instructive and valuable addition to the materials of physiological science.

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Mr. Jesse's work is of a more unpretending, but equally entertaining cast. The title aptly describes its contents, 'Gleanings in Natural History and local Recollections'. The Author was first induced to write down his observations, he tells us, by meeting with the suggestion, in the Preface to the Natural History of Selborne, that if stationary men would pay some at'tention to the districts on which they reside, and would publish 'their thoughts on the objects that surround them, from such ' materials might be drawn the most complete county histories.' County histories would be a very different sort of works, however, from what they are, were they to be compiled from works of a character similar to the History of Selborne. As to our Author's gleanings, it must be confessed, that they bear a very slight relation to topography; nor are they all fresh gathered from the field of nature, his own remarks being freely intermingled with extracts from other writers. All pretension to science is disclaimed, nor is there any thing like arrangement in the volume. But the lover of nature will find, in the shape of anecdote and of facts that have fallen under the Author's personal observation, some details of

considerable novelty and interest. A specimen or two will shew that the volume is at least well worth reading, for the curious and entertaining matter that it comprises. Let not the reader be startled at the subject of our first extract, which relates to that persecuted reptile, the toad.

I remember some years ago getting up into a mulberry tree, and finding in the fork of the two main branches, a large toad almost embedded in the bark of the tree, which had grown over it so much that he was quite unable to extricate himself, and would probably in time be completely covered over with the bark. Indeed, as the tree increased in size, there seems to be no reason why the toad should not in process of time become embedded in the tree itself, as was the case with the end of an oak rail that had been inserted into an elm-tree, which stood close to a public footpath. This, being broken off and grown over, was, on the tree being felled and sawn in two, found nearly in the centre of it. The two circumstances together may explain the curious fact of toads having been found alive in the middle of trees, by shewing that the bark having once covered them, the process of growth in the tree would annually convey the toad more nearly to the centre of it, as happened with the piece of oak-rail; and by shewing that toads, and probably other amphibia, can exist on the absorption of fluids by the skin alone. This is confirmed by the following fact. A gentleman informed me, that he put a toad into a small flower-pot, and secured it so that no insect could penetrate into it, and then buried it in the ground at a sufficient depth to protect it from the influence of frost. At the end of twenty years he took it up, and found the toad increased in size, and apparently healthy. Dr. Townson, in his tracts on the respiration of the amphibia, proves, I think satisfactorily, from actual experiment, that, while those animals with whose economy we are best acquainted receive their principal supply of liquids by the mouth, the frog and salamander tribes take in theirs through the skin alone; all the aqueous fluid which they take in being absorbed by the skin, and all they reject being transpired through it. He found that a frog absorbed nearly its own weight of water in the short time of an hour and a half, and that, by being merely placed on blotting-paper well soaked with water; and it is believed that they never discharge it, except when they are disturbed or pursued, and then they only eject it to lighten their bodies, and facilitate their escape. That the moisture thus imbibed is sufficient to enable some of the amphibia to exist without any other food, there cannot I think be a reasonable doubt; and if this is admitted, the circumstance of toads being found alive in the centre of trees, is accounted for by this and the preceding facts related.' Jesse, pp. 115-117.

Mr. Jesse mentions as 6 a curious fact', that toads are so numerous in the island of Jersey, that they have furnished a nickname (crapaud) for its inhabitants; while, in Guernsey, not a toad is to be found, though they have frequently been imported.' Their having been imported will, perhaps, be thought not the least curious part of the fact. They were a present, we presume, from the neighbouring islanders. If our readers have not had

too much already about spiders, they will be amused with the following account.

There is a large breed of spiders which are found very generally in the palace of Hampton-Court. They are called there cardinals,' having, I suppose, been first seen in Cardinal Wolsey's hall. They are full an inch in length, and many of them of the thickness of a finger. Their legs are about two inches long, and their body covered with a thick hair. They feed chiefly on moths, as appears from the wings of that insect being found in great abundance under and amongst their webs. In running across the carpet in an evening, with the shade cast from their large bodies by the light of the lamp or candle, they have been mistaken for mice, and have occasioned no little alarm to some of the more nervous inhabitants of the palace. A doubt has even been raised, whether the name of cardinal has not been given to this creature from an ancient supposition that the ghost of Wolsey haunts the place of his former glory under this shape. Be this as it may, the spider is considered as a curiosity, and Hampton-Court is the only place in which I have met with it.' Jesse, p. 105.

The aristocratic fondness of the spider for imperial and royal halls, has become proverbial. Solomon's spider has been transformed by modern critics into one of the lizard family; but every one will recollect the oriental distich which makes the spider the tenant of the halls of Afrasiab. These moth-devourers are a pygmy breed, however, in comparison with some of these tigers in entomology'. The mygale avicularia of South America, one of the genus aranea, is about two inches long, and sucks the blood of the humming-bird, which its web is said to be strong enough to snare ! But we must now take leave of the insect world, and turn our attention to birds. And we begin with some curious information contained in Mr. Jesse's volume, relating to the cuckoo.

'How soon would the breed of cuckoos be extinct, if they made their nests and hatched their own young as other birds do! The very peculiar cry of the cuckoo would instantly lead every marauding urchin to their nests; and we should be deprived of that note which every one listens to with pleasure in the country, and which forms one of the varieties of pleasing sounds which enliven our springs and summers. The instinct, also, which leads a cuckoo to deposit its egg in the nest of that bird whose young, when hatched, are sufficiently small to enable the young cuckoo to master them, and whose food is most congenial with its nature, is very surprising. Thus we find the young cuckoo in the nests of the water-wagtail and the hedge-sparrow, whose young he contrives to eject from the nest as soon as they are hatched, as it would be impossible for the old birds to supply nourishment for the cuckoo as well as for their own young ones, especially as the former, as he increases in size, has a most voracicus appetite. I had an opportunity of witnessing this in the case of a young cuckoo which was hatched in the nest of a water-wagtail, who had built in some ivy on a wall close to my house. It required the united efforts of both