IV.

To What Height Do They Raise Themselves in the Atmosphere?

On this point I have not been able to make any direct observation. Perhaps I have dreamed of offering objections to the concourse of intrepid human navigators who undertake such perilous excursions in the air, and for my interest in the study I have found two excellent reasons. The first, that it would be well for them to know that, if they have not had rivals, they have had precursors, who, for 6000 years, have executed silently and noiselessly what they have claimed for themselves by every effort of puffs and publicity. The second, and a still more serious objection and that I believe will truly interest the future in this young industry, is that if the argyronete and its bell has given to science the instrument with which the divers explore the depths of the sea, why may not the study of aerial spiders furnish for aeronauts--these divers in air--the complete apparatus which they require to raise themselves to any height, direct their movements, and maintain themselves at will? Have not these little animals resolved this problem for centuries? Yet the present state of aerostation does not afford ground sufficient for comparison.

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We are, therefore, reduced to conjecture; and, if I may be permitted to express mine, this is what I think:

I believe that spiders rise to the same height where on the fine days of summer one can see the swallows and martins hover, almost lost to sight, in pursuit of gnats that people these regions of the atmosphere. I found this belief on the webs of spiders seen falling in autumn, that seem to come at least from nearly such heights. They begin to be seen at a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards, and there is no great temerity in affirming that they have already traversed a good part of their course. An observation made in 1864, if conclusive, would tend to make remoter still the habitation of spiders; for the fog that determined the fall that year was a _high_ fog, that is to say, one of those uniform mists that hide the sky for several days together, and seem to extend to a great height. But, I repeat, this is all conjecture. One good observation would have been worth far more.'