The ballooning or flying spiders are not confined to any particular species. It seems to be an instinct with them all, but especially with the orb-weavers, or geometrical web-makers, and the wolf spiders; those queer short-legged specimens which dodge about upon the walls and fences, running forward or backward as the whim takes them, or even sideways in a manner at which a crab might turn green with envy. A shower of cobwebs of unusual extent fell in the vicinity of Brooklyn about ten years ago, having been especially noted by a party of surveyors in Prospect Park, among whom was a noted scientist and naturalist. The ground was covered with the webs, averaging as many as fifteen to the square foot. The shower was later noticed by the same observers upon the summit of the Brooklyn Bridge tower, and doubtless covered several miles in area. The Lace-wing Fly Lace indeed! Was ever lace even of fairy queen fashioned so daintily as are the wings of this diaphanous pale green sylph, that flutters in its filmy halo above the grass tips? Yonder it alights upon the clover. Let us steal closely upon its haunt. Here we find it hid under the upper leaf, its eyes of fiery gold gleaming in the shadow, its slender body now caged within the canopy of its four steep, sloping wings, their glassy meshes lit with iridescent hues of opal--the lace-wing fly, a delight to the eye, but whose fragile being is guarded from our too rude approach by a challenge to our sense of smell, which plainly warns us, "Touch not, handle not!" Our first capture of the fairy insect is always a memorable feat, with its lingering, odorous reminders, which not even soap and hot water will entirely obliterate from our finger-tips. But why should we have caught her? What an opportunity we threw away in her capture! Why not, rather, have followed the gauzy sprite, and learned something of her ways, something of the mission she is performing as she flits from leaf to leaf? For this is no idle flight of the lace-wing fly as we see her in the summer meadow. Her golden eyes are on a sharp lookout for a certain quest, and we are fortunate if we chance to surprise her softly at the time of her discovery, and with breathless stillness encourage her in the fulfilment of her plans. Everywhere among the grasses, weeds, and bushes we find the airy tokens of her visits; those delicate, hair-like fringes surrounding culm or twig, or growing like a tiny tuft of some webby mould upon the surface of leaf. But who even guesses the nature of the pretty fringe, or even associates with it the pale green golden-eyed fly which we all know so well?