land. But he writes: "It will, perhaps, surprise you when you hear me state that it has been so warm during our stay here, that the men have been all working in their shirts, that is, without jackets, or waistcoats, à la Mediterranean." The thermometer in Boston may, in the same year, rise to over 100° in summer, and sink to several degrees below zero in winter. The greatest heat and the greatest cold which have ever been experienced by man, though not at the same place, are also worthy of being mentioned. By guarding the heat, received from the vertical rays of the sun, as when a thermometer is placed inside of a blackened box, covered with glass, and surrounded by sand, the mercury in it sometimes rises so as to indicate 240°. Such an experiment was made by Sir John Herschel, while at the Cape of Good Hope in 1837. He remarks: "As these temperatures far surpass that of boiling water, some amusing experiments were made by exposing eggs, fruit, meat, &c., in the same manner, all of which, after a moderate length of exposure, were found perfectly cooked, the eggs being rendered hard and powdery to the centre; and on one occasion a very respectable stew of meat and vegetables was prepared, and eaten with no small relish by the entertained by-standers." * Capt. James C. Ross cooked eggs in New Zealand, by putting them in holes dug in the ground."† Captain Sturt in the description of his experiences in Australia, says: "The thermometer, in the shade of a tree, rose to 127°, after which the bulb burst from the expansion. The ground was almost a molten surface with the heat, and if a match accidentally fell upon it, it was immediately ignited." ‡ Griffiths has observed the thermometer in the desert, near the Euphrates, rise to 132° Fahr. in the shade, and to 156° in the sun. On the other hand, Capt. Back observed the thermometer at Port Reliance, January 17th, 1834, as low as -70°. Gmelin the elder recorded the temperature in Siberia, at the foot of Kiringa, in December, 1838, at -120°. Capt. Lyon observed one singular effect of these extremes of temperature. He says: "There were two or three others, equally insensible to the cold as myself; but the change of climate had an effect on me, which, I believe, was not experienced by the rest, and which was, that the hair from my head regularly moulted, if I may be excused the expression, and was renewed two or three times; even in the summer following, and this second winter, the process still continued, although in a slighter degree." He describes the degree of cold thus: "Our stovefunnels collected a quantity of ice within them, notwithstanding fires kept up night and day, so that it was frequently requisite to take them down, in order to break and melt out the ice, as it collected in the same form as the pulp of a cocoa-nut lies within the shell." Ermang lost the skin of his finger by touching the screw of an instrument. The sailors in Arctic expeditions, where the mercury is frozen for weeks, amuse themselves by firing mercurial bullets. The question is often asked, whether from any cause, local or cosmical, the climate of the same place has undergone, or is likely to undergo, material changes with the lapse of time. We may look at this question, first, under the light of facts, and then under the light of theory. Individual experience is not adequate to settle the inquiry, because the cycle of the weather is too large to be embraced by the longest life of man, much less to repeat itself within the memory of the same person. Extraordinary degrees of heat or cold, extraordinary storms, or any other extraordinary phase of the climate, occur at long intervals, and produce a deep impression on the observer, especially in early life. If the same thing does not occur again for a century, it is natural to conclude that nature has degenerated, without remembering that such events were as extraordinary when they occurred last, as they *Results, &c., p. 443. Athenæum, No. 1012, p. 312. † Antarctic Expedition, II. p. 108. Travels in Siberia, II. p. 106. would be now, and have never been witnessed except on rare occasions. Besides other writers, to whom we shall refer more particularly, this subject has been discussed by Buffon, Hume,* Abbé du Bos, Pelloutier,† Dr. Robertson, Gibbon, ‡ Dr. Williams, § Jefferson, || Volney, Holyoke,¶ Noah Webster, and Dr. Forry.** It has been a common opinion that the climate of the whole earth has undergone, within historical times, a gradual amelioration. It has been thought that in America the climate has grown milder, even since the first European settlements were made. The argument of Barrington,†† Mann, ‡‡ and others is this. Herodotus states that in the European part of Scythia, (the Palus Mootis), the winter lasted eight months in the year, and with almost intolerable severity, and that the countries farther north were uninhabitable on account of the cold. The Sacred Scriptures speak of hoar frost in Palestine and Egypt, where there is none now. Livy §§ enlarges upon the cold winters of Italy, when the Tiber was frozen, and armies crossed it, and tells us, that the Roman soldiers complained of living in tents in winter, on account of the cold. Juvenal states that the congelation of the Tiber was frequent in his day. Virgil || directs the farmer to put straw under the sheep and goats to protect them from the cold; and he speaks of the freezing of the rivers in Calabria, in the southern part of Italy. Horace alludes to the Acres Hyemes. Passages in his Odes imply that the streets of Rome are filled with snow and ice. Juvenal, in his sixth Satire,¶¶ remarks, that the freezing of the rivers afforded the ladies an opportunity to show an extraordinary degree of deference to the commands of the Egyptian priests, in the performance of their ablutions: "Hibernum fractâ glacie descendet in amnem ; Ter matutino Tiberi mergetur," &c. In Elian, instructions are given for catching eels when the water is covered with ice.*** Ovid, banished to Tomos for seven years, inveighs bitterly against the cold of that place, though the latitude was only 44°. It is said that in the year 271, B. C., the winter was so rigorous and so long in Italy, that the snow remained in the forum, at a prodigious height, for forty days; the Tiber was frozen to a great depth.††† Livy relates that in the second Punic war, while the Romans, under the command of Scipio, besieged a city of Spain, situated near the mouth of the Ebro, the ground was covered with snow, to a depth of 4 feet, for 35 consecutive days. Cæsar, Virgil, Ovid, Strabo, Seneca, Pomponius Mela, Petronius, Pliny, Justin, Statius, Herodian, Justin, and Diodorus Siculus refer to the intolerable cold of the winters in the countries situated between the parallels of 44° and 50°, and which extend from Gaul to the Euxine. The description which they give of these countries would not be unsuitable now to Norway and Sweden. As if two thousand years ago the climate of the region bordering the rivers Don, Dnieper, Danube, and the Rhone was one only realized now in Lapland, Siberia, and the neighborhood of Hudson's Bay in America. Plutarch asserts that the pressure of the enormous masses of ice, in the Euxine, against the sides of vessels, crushes them to pieces. Both Virgil and Ovid mention the fact that the inhabitants of Thrace, and near the Danube, cut their wine with axes, and distribute it in solid pieces: Georg., III. 297, 317. Hist. des Celtes, liv. xii. Hist. of Vermont. Mem. Amer. Acad., II. p. 70. tt Phil. Trans. 1768, LVIII. p. 58. L. V. C. 13. TT L. II. 406, 407. *** De Animal., L. XIV. C. 29. ttt Histoire Romaine de Catrou et Rouillé, VI. p. 239, "Udaque consistunt formam servantia testæ, The hair and beards of the men were often covered with frost: Tacitus describes the prodigious force of the winds in Gaul and Germany, which uprooted trees, transported the roofs of houses, and carried away men. Virgil and Ovid relate, that in their day there were bears in Thrace, which are now found only very near to the polar circle; and that the inhabitants lived under ground part of the year, as the Laplanders now do; and that they wrapped themselves in skins, and left nothing but the mouth and eyes exposed. An argument, used by Buffon, is, that the deer, which cannot live now south of the Baltic, and is found in Spitzbergen, was, in the time of Cæsar, a native of the Hercynian Forests, which then overshadowed a great part of Germany and Poland. Hence it has been concluded that the soil and temperature of all the lands from Spain to India, and from the ridge of Mount Atlas to Lapland, have, in the course of ages, since the period of the oldest historical monuments, been gradually subjected to a complete change, viz., from an extreme degree of moisture and cold to the opposite extreme of heat and aridity. To neutralize the force of the evidence derived from instances of extraordinary cold in the ancient winters of Europe, Arago has laboriously constructed a catalogue, displaying the years in which the rivers of Europe have frozen; and he finds that this happened to the Seine in 822, 849, 1218, 1307, 1325, 1408, 1422, 1430, 1433, 1480, 1565, 1616, 1657, 1658, 1663, 1677, 1726, 1743, 1744, 1748, 1755, 1757, 1763, 1766, 1767, 1768, 1776, 1789, 1795, 1799, 1800, 1803, 1813, 1820, 1821, 1823, 1829, 1830, 1838, 1841, and 1854; to the Rhone, in 400, 822, 860, 893, 1216, 1234, 1302, 1305, 1323, 1364, 1460, 1565, 1568, 1603, 1766, 1776, 1789, 1820, 1830; to the Tiber, 396 B. C., 271 B. C., 1009 (?), 1334; to the Po, in 1082, 1133, 1216, 1234, 1334, 1503, 1594; to the Rhine, in 874, 880, 1076, 1077, 1124, 1288, 1292, 1594, 1767, 1801, 1802; to the Meuse, in 874, 880, 891, 1338, 1513, 1565, 1635, 1636, 1798, 1799, 1801, 1802, 1803, 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812, 1818, 1819, 1822, 1823, 1827, 1829, 1830; to the Danube, in 462, 559, 822, 1430, 1458, 1460, 1624, 1788, 1789; to the Black Sea, 66 B. C., 400, 763; to the Black Sea, in 801; to the Nile, in 1829; to the Adriatic, in 822, 1234, 1709, and to many ports of the Mediterranean, in 822, 1507, 1638, 1709. In the year 66 B. C., a battle of cavalry was fought on the ice in the northern part of the Black Sea, by one of the generals of Mithridates, where, six months before, he had had a naval combat. In 299, A.D., an immense quantity of Germans passed the Rhine on the ice. In 462, Theodaner traversed the Danube with his army. In 1458, an army of 40,000 men was encamped upon the Danube. În Padua, not far from the village of Mantua, where Virgil was born, there fell in January, 1608, such a quantity of snow, that the roofs of many houses could not bear the weight, and were crushed, and the wine froze in the caves. In the year 173, the snow in England covered the ground for thirteen weeks. In the winter of 1683-84, the French academicians saw the wine freeze in ten or twelve minutes.§ 1688, Charles XI. of Sweden crossed the Baltic with his army. In 1779-80, *Ovid, Tristium, L. III. El. X. 23, 24. ‡ T. III. El. X. 21, 22. Georgics, III. 366. 490. In horse and artillery were transported over the ice in the harbor of New York, between the city and Staten Island.* In 1642, the harbor of Boston was covered with ice, so that teams could pass from one island to another. In 1696-97, loaded sleds passed on the ice from Boston to Nantasket. In 1780, the Chesapeake was covered with solid ice from its head to the mouth of the Potomac. In 1835, the harbor of Boston was closed down to Fort Independence, and those of Portland, Newburyport, New Bedford, New Haven, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington were frozen over; the Potomac, at Washington, was frozen so firmly that carriages might cross on the ice. The astonishing fall of snow at Boston, in February, 1717, when the inhabitants entered the street from their chamber windows on snow-shoes, and when sheep were not extricated from the snow for twenty-eight days, is as wonderful, though probably no less unusual, than that which Livy describes as occurring near Barcelona in the second Punic war. On the contrary, in January and February, 1755-56, troops were transported by water from New York to Albany. On Christmas day, in 1795, ladies walked upon the battery in New York, without shawls. : Thompson has collected the following catalogue of remarkable frosts :"From October, 763, till February, 764, a frost continued at Constantinople; both the Euxine and Propontis were frozen one hundred miles from shore. In the year 860, the Rhone was frozen. On midsummer day, in 1035, the frost was so severe in England that fruits were destroyed. In 1063, the Thames was frozen for fourteen weeks. In the years 1149, 1263, and 1269, it was again frozen. In 1294 and 1323, the Baltic was frozen. In the year 1334, a frost of two months and twenty days' duration froze the rivers of Italy and Provence. In 1402, the Baltic was again frozen. From November 24, 1413, to February 10, 1414, the Thames was frozen to Gravesend. In 1426 and 1460, the Baltic was locked in ice. In 1507, the harbor of Marseilles was frozen over. In 1515, carriages crossed the Thames upon the ice from Lambeth to Westminster. In 1544, and previously, in 1468, wine was cut by hatchets in Flanders. In 1548, the Baltic was frozen over. In 1564, from December 21, to January 3, 1565, the Thames was covered with ice. In 1565, loaded wagons passed over the Scheldt. In 1594, the Scheldt, Rhine, and sea at Venice, were frozen. In 1607, fires were kindled on the ice upon the Thames. In 1622, many European rivers, the Zuyder Zee and Hellespont were frozen. In the years 1657 and 1667, the Seine was frozen. In 1658, the Baltic was frozen over, and Charles X. led his whole army across from Holstein to Denmark. In 1683-84, the Thames was frozen eleven inches deep. In 1708, the ice was twenty-seven inches thick in the harbor of Copenhagen, and in April, 1709, people passed on the ice between Schonen and Denmark; both at Genoa and Leghorn, the sea was frozen. From November 24, 1716, to February 9, 1717, the Thames was again frozen; fairs were held and oxen roasted. In 1740, it was again covered with ice, and festivities held. In 1783, frost was observed in June. In 1788-89, the Thames was passable on the ice opposite the Custom-House, from November to January. In 1794-95, Pichegru's army was encamped upon the ice in Holland. In 1813-4, the Thames was again frozen, and booths were erected on the ice; the frost was intense in Ireland. In 1823, that river was once more locked in ice." At a time when the opinion was almost universalf that the winters, at least, had grown milder in Europe, Dr. Noah Webster undertook to disprove it with great research and ingenuity. He points out the distinction, formerly existing as now, between the climate of the hills of Judæa and Syria and of the plains. He calls notice to the severe winter in Syria of 1741-42; to that of * Amer. Journ. Sci., XLVII. p. 227. + Rees's Encyc. (Climate). Conn. Acad. Arts and Sciences, 1810. Vol. I. p. 210; Miscellaneous Papers, p. 119. 1756–57, when the mercury sunk into the bulb of the thermometer at Aleppo, and multitudes of vines were killed, as were olives that had stood fifty years. He quotes from Arthur Young's Tour in Italy, in November and December, 1789, who then found the hills covered with snow, and the streets a sheet of ice, and says that on the 29th of November Cyprus wine was frozen, and milk burst the vessels in which it was put. Young crossed Mount Cenis on the 21st December in ten feet of snow. He thinks the quotations from the classics point not to average winters, but to hard winters, such as those of 1642, 1709, 1741, and 1780. Dr. Webster also quotes a passage from Lady Montague's letters, who travelled along the Danube in 1717, and describes Mount Hoemus and Rodope as always covered with snow. These are 10 south of Tomos, the place of Ovid's banishment. Dr. Webster refutes Gibbon's statement,* that "the Rhine and the Danube were frequently frozen, and capable of sustaining the most enormous weight. The barbarians often chose the winter to transport their armies and cavalry over a vast and solid bridge of ice. Modern ages have not presented an instance of a like phenomenon," with the remark that both the Rhine and the Danube have, within three centuries, been frequently covered with ice sufficient to sustain the largest armies that ever issued from the north. In 1795, the French troops crossed the Rhine into Holland on the ice. "This event happened so opportunely for the purposes of the French, that even atheists were disposed to admit the existence of a God, for the purpose of arranging this event among the interpositions of heaven in their favor." Dr. Webster explains the migration of the deer, not by the change of climate, but by the retreat of the forests under the axe of the emigrant. Dr. Webster regards it as a capital fact, that he does not "find in history any evidence that a change of climate, generally, has carried any of the delicate fruits into latitudes where they did not thrive in the earliest ages." Dr. Webster discusses next the evidence adduced by Jefferson and Williams to prove a change of climate in the United States, and he arrives at this conclusion upon the whole subject: "From all I can discover in regard to the seasons, in ancient and modern times, I see no reason to conclude, with Dr. Williams, that the heat of the earth is increasing. It appears that all the alterations in a country, in consequence of clearing and cultivation, result only in making a different distribution of heat and cold, moisture and dry weather, among the several seasons. The clearing of lands opens them to the sun, their moisture is exhaled, they are more heated in summer, but more cold in winter near the surface; the temperature becomes unsteady and the seasons irregular. This is the fact. A smaller degree of cold, if steady, will longer preserve snow and ice, than a greater degree under frequent changes. Hence we solve the phenomenon of more constant ice and snow in the early ages; which I believe to have been the case. It was not the degree but the steadiness of the cold which produced this effect. Every forest in America exhibits this phenomenon. We have, in the cultivated districts, deep snow to-day, and none to-morrow; but the same quantity of snow, falling in the woods, lies there till spring. The same fact, on a larger scale, is observed in the ice of our rivers. This will explain all the appearances of the season, in ancient and modern times, without resorting to the unphilosophical hypothesis of a general increase of heat." Prof. Schowt read a paper before the Royal Society of Copenhagen, "On the supposed Changes in the Meteorological Constitution of the different Parts of the Earth during the Historical Period." In the absence of the thermometers and hygrometers of modern science, the result of the inquiry will depend on the answers to the following questions: 1. What animals lived, and what plants grew in the country spoken of; have they been the * Hist. I. ch. 9. † Edin. Jour. Sci., VIII. p. 311. |