applied to the flame of the candle; then draw one of them gently, according to its whole length, through the flame, and part of the smoke will adhere to the glass. Repeat the same operation, only leaving a little part at the end untouched, and so each time leave a further part of the same end untouched, till at last you have tinged the glass with several dyes, increasing gradually in blackness from one end of the glass to the other. Smoke the other glass in like manner; and apply the two glasses one against the other, only separated by a rectangular border, cut of glass or card paper, the smoked faces being opposed to each other, and the deepest tinges of both placed together at the same end. Tie the glasses firmly together with waxen thread, and they are ready for use. The tinge at one end should be the slightest possible, and at the other end so dark that you cannot see the candle through. By this contrivance, applied between your eye and the Sun, you will have the advantage not only of seeing the Sun's light white, according to its natural colour, and his image more distinct than through common dark glasses, but also of being able to intercept more or less of his light as you please, and, as the clearness or thickness of the air requires it, by bringing a dark er or lighter part of this combined dark glass before your eye; which will be a great convenience at all times, but particularly when the brightness of the Sun is liable to sudden changes from flying clouds.'

The Naturalist's Diary

For OCTOBER 1820.

How fresh the air! what fragrance from the ground
Steams upwards as the cloudless orb of day
Sinks to the west, and all the landscape round
Basks in the splendour of his parting ray!

This is thy magic pencil, AUTUMN,-thine
These deep'ning shadows, and that golden glow,

Rich as the gems which, in some eastern mine,
Athwart the gloom their mingled radiance throw.

THE general state of the weather toward the close of autumn has a tendency to revive the natural spirits of those whose constitutions have been debilitated by the preceding heats. A great part of the day during the summer is too sultry for exercise; but, as autumn advances, the air becomes more temperate, and the evenings, particularly, are serene and pleasant.

The groves now lose their leafy honours; but, before they are entirely tarnished, an adventitious beauty, arising from that gradual decay which loosens the withering leaf, gilds the autumnal landscape with a temporary splendour, superior to the verdure of spring or the luxuriance of summer.

See yon huge oaks, bathed in the amber flood;

See, through its brightness shines their mellow green,
Telling how long those reverend forms have stood,
And what their strength and beauty once have been.

They wreathe their roots, they fling their branches wide
O'er yon smooth meadow, as in ages past:
Assailed in vain, and shattered, they deride,
Deep anchored still, the fury of the blast.

Some are uninjured yet:—their leafy heads
Shelter the flocks, as they reeline, or graze
O'ercanopied, what time the Dog-star sheds
Full on the withered turf his fiercest blaze.

Now to the dust, in ruins down they go,

Verdure above, but canker all beneath;

As o'er some couch hangs poised th' uplifted blow,
Where ebbing life contends in vain with death.

Since these were acorns, since their conrse was run
From youth to age, from vigour to decay,

What deeds have in the busy world been done!

What thrones have sunk, what empires passed away1!

Among the meteorological phenomena of this month, may be nimed a very heavy full of snow and storm which happened on the 21st of October, 1819.

'Lines written at Ampthill Park. See also our last volume, p. 265.

Hips, haws, sloes, and blackberries, now adorn our hedges; and the berries of the barberry (berberis vulgaris), bryony (tamus communis), honeysuckle, elder, holly, woody-nightshade, and privet (ligustrum vulgare), afford a valuable supply of food for many of the feathered race, while passing their winter with us.

About the middle of the month, the common mar tin disappears; and, shortly afterwards, the smallest kind of swallow, the sand-martin, migrates. The Royston or hooded crow (corvus cornix) arrives from Scotland and the northern parts of England, being driven thence by the severity of the season. The woodcock returns, and is found on our eastern coasts.

Various kinds of waterfowl make their appearance; and, about the middle of the month, wild geese leave the fens, and go to the rye lands, to devour the young corn. Rooks sport and dive, in a playful manner, before they go to roost, congregating in large numbers. Stares assemble in the fen countries, in vast multitudes, and, perching on the reeds, render them unfit for thatching, and thus materially injure the property of the farmer.

The appearance of the gossamer, in this and the preceding month, leads us to speak of its cause in those wonderful spiders which produce the gossamer webs, by the buoyancy of which, it is conceived, they are enabled to sail in the air, and to mount to prodigious elevations. These webs, which so frequently cover the surface of fallow and stubble fields, or form a delicate tracery upon our hedges, strung with the pearl-like drops of the morning dew, are most common in the autumn. In Germany, their appearance is so constant at this period, and so closely connected with the change of season, that they are popularly denominated by the expressive name, Der fliegender sommer,- -the flying summer. The production of these webs was, with the natu

ralists of former times, a subject of strange speculation. Spenser alludes to the vulgar idea of their formation, when he speaks of, The fine nets which oft we woven see of scorched dew! Robert Hooke, one of the earliest Fellows of the Royal Society, and an eminent philosopher, gravely conjectures respecting gossamer, that 'tis not unlikely but that those great white clouds, that appear all the summer time, may be of the same substance! In France, where these webs are called Fils de la Vierge, it has been imagined that they are formed of the cottony envelope of the eggs of the vine coccus.

Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in whose work on 'Entomology' these opinions are enumerated, give the following natural account of this phenomenon. 'These webs (at least many of them) are air-balloons, and the aëronauts are not

Lovers who may bestride the gossamer

That idles in the wanton summer air,
And yet not fall-

but spiders, who, long before Montgolfier, nay, ever since the creation, have been in the habit of sailing through the fields of ether in these air-light chariots! This seems to have been suspected long ago by Henry Moore, who says,

As light and thin as cobwebs that do fly

In the blew air, caused by the autumnal sun,
That boils the dew that on the earth doth lie,
May seem this whitish rug then is the scum ;

Unless that wiser men make't the field-spider's loom.

Where he also alludes to the old opinion of scorched dew. But the first naturalists who made this dis covery appear to have been Dr. Hulse and Dr. Martin Lister the former first observing that spiders shoot their webs into the air; and the latter, besides this, that they are carried upon them in that element. This last gentleman, in fine serene weather in September, had noticed these webs falling from the heavens, and in them discovered more than

once a spider, which he named the bird. On another occasion, whilst he was watching the proceedings of a common spider, the animal suddenly...darted forth a long thread, and, vaulting from the place on which it stood, was carried upwards to a considerable height. Numerous observations afterwards confirmed this extraordinary fact; and he further discovered, that, while they fly in this manner, they pull in their long thread with their fore-feet, so as to form it into a ball-or, as we may call it, air-balloon-of flake. The height to which spiders will thus ascend he affirms is prodigious. One day in the autumn, when the air was full of webs, he mounted to the top of the highest steeple of York Minster, from whence he could discern the floating webs still very high above him. Some spiders that fell and were entangled upon the pinnacles he took. They were of a kind that never enter houses, and therefore could not be supposed to have taken their flight from the steeple.'

There are several questions connected with the formation of gossamer, which still remain open for the researches of naturalists. Whether the terrestrial and aërial gossamer be formed by the same animal, though highly probable, is yet undecided. The purpose for which these nets are spread over the surface of the fields, is not less a matter of doubt. The present writers adopt the opinion that the meshes are intended as bridges, by which the little animal may pass with facility from straw to straw, or from clod to clod; and that they also serve to collect the dew, which spiders drink with avidity. We think that they have too easily doubted that they are chiefly designed to catch the flies when they rise in the morning from the surface of the earth. What, again, is the purpose of the lofty excursions of spiders into the upper regions of the atmosphere? It appears scarcely rational to doubt that these are predatory voyages, and that spiders sail among the clouds of