Almost any bright autumn or late summer day is certain to reward our search--indeed a search will hardly be necessary. The entire meadows are often draped in the glistening meshes. They festoon the grass tips, and wave their silken streamers from every mullein or other tall weed. Our garments are soon faced with a new warp and woof of glistening silk, and an occasional tickling betrays the floating fluffy mass which has encombed our hands or face. The glistening "rain of wool" of Pliny, or the mimic snow-squall of Gilbert White, I have witnessed many times, only in less degree, over the October rowen-fields. This tickling upon our hands is perhaps not all to be accounted for by the mere contact of the silky web. If we examine closely, we shall doubtless find a lively little spider extricating itself from its unsatisfactory anchorage, and creeping to the nearest available position for a new flight. Even as you are examining the web upon your hand the spry midget has mounted to the top of your finger, and is off on his new silken balloon in a twinkling, sailing upward and out of sight even while his fellow-aeronauts are falling right and left. For this flying-machine, though a toy, as it were, of the wind, is still under control of the wise little sailor at the helm. Almost any one of these flying tufts intercepted on our finger or upon a small stick will induce its little aeronaut to make a new start, and a careful examination with a pocket magnifier will disclose his secret. No matter how slight the breeze, he seems instantly to head against it, the abdomen is then raised, and in a moment a tiny stream of flossy glistening silk is seen issuing from the spinnerets beneath. Not the ordinary single web which we all know, but a broad band which represents the many hundreds of strands usually combined in the single thread, but now permitted to issue singly from the spinnerets. White speaks of the spider "shooting out" the web, and such is the apparent feat, but doubtless the breeze assists in the operation. It is certainly taking good care of this floating banner from the loom of this little spinner upon our finger-tip. Longer and longer it grows. A yard or more of its length is soon swaying about in the breeze. So buoyant has it now become that the little spider is visibly drawn upward, and now clings barely by his tip-toes. In another second he is off on his travels, where few could follow him even if they would. But this we _must_ do if we would see the true "balloon," with its basket and rigging and captain all in perfect sailing trim.