Let us look at, for instance, the wonderful things related of the argyronete, or aquatic spider. [Footnote 97]
[Footnote 97: The argyronete is a spider that lives in the water where she constructs a charming little edifice that appears surrounded with a silky mortar. The down that covers her contains a certain quantity of air for respiration. This gives her in swimming the appearance of a ball of quicksilver, from which we have her name.]
I could not tell anything more unlikely, so I will only exact for the atmosphere a companion to what the Père de Lignac discovered in the last century for the water. Yes, I pretend there are spiders that live in the air as well as those living in water, and that every year, from the earliest days of spring, there is, unknown to us, a general migration of spiders toward the atmosphere, where they pass their best season, form their nets, chase their prey, and only return to earth in the first fogs of autumn to find their quarters for the winter. I add, also, that this ascent and descent give rise to the curious phenomenon, still so badly explained, of the gossamer. And as it was to the study of this phenomenon that I owe my knowledge of the rest, may I be permitted here, by way of demonstration, to relate briefly the path I have followed and the proofs which have led to the conviction I express?
Attracted, as I was, by all that concerns spiders, I could not remain indifferent to a fact so important and interesting as the periodical apparition of those threads which in spring and autumn we see flying about in long white skeins, clinging to trees, to hedges, and to the vestments of the passers-by, carpeting the country in a few hours with more silk, and finer and whiter, than could be spun in a year by all the reels in the world. Admirable netting, glistening in the light of the setting sun, and reflecting the sweetest, softest tints of gold, vermilion, and emerald, and receiving the pretty and poetical name of "fils de la Vierge." Was there not between this phenomenon and my preceding observations a secret tie, some mysterious relation? I seemed to foresee it, and, setting to work immediately, rejected from the very beginning the usual explanation of this phenomenon.
How, indeed, can we admit these floating gossamers as merely the refuge webs of spiders, torn by the violence of the wind from the trees and forests and carried capriciously through the air? Will not the slightest observation convince us that they never appear but in the calmest moments, on days foggy in the morning, but afterward beautiful, and not preceding a storm; never in summer, often in the spring and autumn, and sometimes even in winter? If the winds carry them, why do they not appear in summer? Are violent winds and spider-webs both wanting? And who has ever seen one of these webs carried by a hurricane, especially in quantity sufficient to produce such a phenomenon? For the fall of gossamers sometimes lasts for almost entire days, and in certain countries during the middle of the day the fields are covered with them. Add, too, that violent winds are generally local, while this phenomenon is universal, and so periodical that in the same climates it appears at the same epochs, and, when one knows what produces it, it is easy to predict the time and day of the apparition.
Discontented, then, on this point with books and their explanations, I turn completely to the side of nature, and present all I observed.
From the first appearance of these threads in autumn, I was struck with the immense multitudes of new spiders met with everywhere, and which I had not seen during the summer. Little brown lycoses filled the air, so that it seemed as if it had rained them. If one walked in the fields, the meadows, the gardens, on the borders of the woods, among heaps of dried leaves, scattered all through the forest everywhere, could be seen myriads of these little brown spiders, jumping up and flying before me in every direction, and exactly such as I had already recognized as such excellent swimmers. After having passed the winter in the earth, in the holes of worms that they completed with a little silk, they reappeared after the cold in great numbers, to disappear again entirely in the first bright days of spring, and as if by enchantment. If one is seen again during the summer, we may be sure it is some female retarded by laying her eggs, and dragging laboriously her cocoon after her. Now, what has become of the others?
For several months I could not satisfy myself on this point, when, on the 21 St of October, 1856, in the enclosure of the little seminary of Iseure, near Moulins, I came to a positive decision, I was observing the fall of a large quantity of gossamers, which were falling on that day in large white flakes, when I perceived close to me in the air one of those little black spiders descending gradually, and as if she were jumping. She held by an invisible thread to a large flake, which came down slowly about seven or eight yards above her; but, keeping outside of it, she hung by the end of the long thread, like an aeronaut underneath his balloon. My attention once attracted, I noticed so great a number that I was astonished I had not taken care sooner; for there was scarcely a flake underneath which there were not one or two, and this sometimes even before the flake itself was visible. [Footnote 98]
[Footnote 98: There is an observation which confirms my own. We read in Darwin's Journal, page 159: "Mr. Darwin saw a large number of gossamers on the ship Beagle, when she was about 60 miles from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. It was the first of November, and these gossamers were carried by a very light breeze, and on each were found an immense number of little spiders, similar in appearance, about the twelfth of an inch in length, and in color a deep brown. The smallest were a deeper shade than the others. None were found on the white tufts, but all on threads." Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of his Majesty's Ship, the Beagle, 1845.]