The country boy, or I might say even country baby, who does not know a spider-web when he sees it would be considered a curiosity nowadays. The morning gossamer spread in the grass or hung among the weeds and glistening in the dew--who has not seen it, and thought of the agile, long-legged proprietor somewhere lurking near by? And yet for ages, and until a comparatively recent date, this cobweb, either trailing lightly in the breeze or spread in the grass, was a mystery as to its source, and was believed to consist of dew burned by the sun. But the spider has hoodwinked even the wise heads in many other ways, and even to-day is an unsolved mystery to many of us. Yes, we all know the spider-web and the spider, but have we tried to solve the puzzle which he spreads before us by every path, in our window-blind, our office, our bedroom, or even, it may be, in mid-ocean. Here, for instance, a puzzled nautical friend propounds the question: "How do those tiny spiders get on my yacht when I am twenty miles at sea? They could not have hatched simultaneously all over the ship, and I find them by the dozens all over the sails and rigging, and even on my clothing." I have heard of a little girl who ran in-doors to her mother in great excitement to tell her that it was "snowin' 'pider-webs," a picturesque and true statement as far as it goes, but which tells but half the story, for each of the falling webs held a pretty secret. What that secret was my yachtsman can readily guess, for the two half-stories taken together complete the tale. Various accounts of these gossamer showers have been handed down in history, and were always a mystery. Even the ancient Pliny records a "rain of wool," a phenomenon which, in a greater or less degree, is to be seen by every walker in the country during the late summer and autumn months--the annual picnic of the "ballooning spiders," whose peculiar aeronautic methods are shown in my illustration. Gilbert White, in his "History of Selborne," written over a hundred years ago, gives a most graphic account of one of these cobweb showers: