How still the breeze! save what the filmy threads
Of dew evaporate brushes from the plain.[1176]
And Quarles:
And now autumnal dews were seen
To cobweb every green.[1177]
Likewise Blackmore:
How part is spun in silken threads, and clings,
Entangled in the grass, in gluey strings.[1178]
Henry More also mentions this old belief; but suspected, however, the true origin and use of the filmy threads:
As light and thin as cobwebs that do fly