A SHOWER OF SPIDER WEBS.

Some time ago in the town of Milwaukee and its neighbourhood underwent a strange and novel visitation in the shape of a protracted shower of spider webs, lasting several minutes, and extending over a radius of several square miles. Many of the single threads were of great length, measuring between twenty-five and thirty feet from end to end, and one in particular is reported to have fallen at Green Bay, no less than fifty-four feet long..

No spiders were attached to these webs, as in the case of a similar phenomenon observed by Professor DARWIN near the mouth of the River Plate, when the Beagle, at a distance of some sixty miles from land, was completely enshrouded in a glistening pall of these delicate and lustrous threads.

In his delightful "Natural History of Selbourne" WHITE describes a rain of spider webs at considerable length, and records the fact that it fell from such a great height in the air that, standing on the summit of a lofty hill near his place of residence, he could see the clouds of threads floating far above his head.

Spiders must, we presume, have spun these webs at some time or other; but as spiders do not fly, at least we believe not, the question arises if they spun their gossamer in the air, how did they get there? Again, in the case of the web that descended from the skies in such quantities upon Milwaukee the other day, what had become of its industrious manufacturers? They must, like, BREITMANN's "himmelstrahlender Stern" have "gone away in the Ewigkeit."

Upon that circumstance the Milwaukians are to be congratulated, for the mere conjecture of what they might have suffered from the descent of a billion or two spiders, each individual insect of dimensions qualifying it to spin threads thirty feet long, is calculated to make one's flesh creep.

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