76. The Gossamer.
Spenser calls the gossamer
The fine nets, which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew.
Henry More alludes to this opinion, which seems to have been then commonly held.
As light and thin as cobwebs that do fly
In the blew air, caused by autumnal sun
That boils the dew that on the earth doth lie,
May seem this whitish rag then is the scum,
Unless that wiser men make't the field-spiders loom
77. Ship's Names.
We have just taken possession of the little island of Marigalante. Columbus gave it this name after his own ship, which in English we should call Pretty Poll.
The propria quæ navibus of the Spaniards at the present day cannot so readily be rendered into sailor's English. The Santissima Trinidad, the St. Juan Nepomuceno, the St. Francisco, and the Nuestra-Senora, under her thousand and one diffe-
