The pretty name “gossamer” has puzzled the etymologists and led to some far-fetched suggestions. That favoured by the authority of the great Oxford dictionary of the English language is that it is a corruption of “Go-summer,” because gossamer appears in autumn and is associated with St. Martin’s summer. This is like saying that the word “cray-fish” refers to fish that live in a “cray” or brook, instead of deriving it from the French word _écrevisse_. The Germans call gossamer _Sommerweben_. But the Latin word for cotton is _gossypium_; and there is an Italian word, _gossampino_, which occurs in an English form, _gossampine_, in the sixteenth century, and means a kind of silk or cotton obtained from the fluffy hairs of a plant called bombax. We also find “gossamer” spelt “gossamire” in English of that date; and it seems to me most likely that an Italian word _gossamira_, signifying “fairy-cotton” or “magic goose-down,” is the origin of our word. [Illustration: FIG. 48.—View of the lower surface of the head and body of a large Burmese spider, known as Liphistius, to show the spinnerets (3 and 4), which are really reduced or rudimentary legs, and are in this spider retained in their original position, instead of being pushed down to the end of the body, as they are in all other spiders (see Fig. 49, _spn_), I. to VI., the basal joints of the legs and palps of the head-region; 1, the first abdominal segment; 2, the second; 3 and 4, the legs of the third and fourth abdominal segments, which are the spinnerets; 11, the eleventh abdominal segment—in front of it rudiments of the segments 5 to 10 are seen; _an_, anus; _a_, _b_, inner and outer lobes of the first pair of spinnerets.]