WEST MICHIGAN FRUIT GROWERS' SOCIETY. 79 



in advance that cold waves are more frequent and severe than formerly, and 

 under this assumption I am asked to tell why they are so. At first sight 

 these innocent little questions appear easy of solution, but I confess the more 

 I thought them over and inquired into all they comprehend, so far as I am 

 able to grasp them, the more difficult it is for me to arrive at conclusioas 

 that may appear satisfactory to you. If the questions have reference solely 

 to atmospheric changes in Michigan, or even in the United States, our 

 inquiry will be more limited than if we refer to other countries. In history 

 we find refereuce to the severity of winters in almost every age, and in both 

 Europe and Asia. The writer of the article " Black Sea," for the American 

 edition of the Encyclopedia, informs us that that large body of salt water was 

 almost entirely frozen over in the year 401, and again in. 762. Such results, 

 however, could not be brought about by a cold wave passing over, but rather 

 by a long period of excessive cold weather. In former times the Rhine, 

 between France and Germany, and the Rhone, in the south of Prance, were 

 frequently frozen over and the ice was so thick that the people crossed for 

 weeks at a time on carts and sledges. The Danube has often been frozen 

 over from its head-waters to its mouth. While an event of this character is 

 of rare occurrence in modern times, in the reign of Edward III. of England 

 the river Thames was frozen over, and again in the reign of James I. We 

 are unable to determine the intensity of the cold at the times referred to, as 

 no record remains further than that of the freezing over of rivers, the depth 

 to which the frost penetrated the ground, the destruction of fruit trees and 

 the freezing to death of persons and cattle. A philosophical historian writ- 

 ing on this subject says: ''Some ingenious writers have suspected that 

 Europe was much colder formerly than it is at present, and the most ancient 

 descriptions of the climate of Germany tend exceedingly to confirm their 

 theory. The general complaints of intense frost and eternal winter are per- 

 haps little to be regarded, since we have no method of reducing to the accu- 

 rate standard of the thermometer the feelings or the expressions of an orator 

 born in the happier regions of Greece or Asia. But I shall select two 

 remarkable circumstances of a less equivocal nature. 



"1. The great rivers which covered the Roman provinces, the Rhine and 

 the Danube, were frequently frozen over and capable of supporting the most 

 numerous weights. The barbarians, who often chose that severe season for 

 their inroads, transported without apprehension or danger their enormous 

 armies, their cavalry and their heavy wagons, over a solid bridge of ice. 

 Modern ages have not presented an instance of a like phenomenon. 



"'Z. In the time of Julius Caesar the reindeer, as well as the elk and the wild 

 bull, was a native of the Hercynian forest, which then overshadowed a great 

 part of Germany and Poland ; while at present the reindeer can not subsist, 

 much less multiply, in any country to the south of the Baltic. 



"The modern improvements sufficiently explain the causes of the diminu- 

 tion of the cold. These immense woods have been gradually cleared, which 

 intercepted from the earth the rays of the sun. The morasses have been 

 drained, and in proportion as the soil has been cultivated the air has become 

 more temperate." [See Gibbon's "Decline and Fall." Vol. I, pp. 252, 253, 

 .254, Milman's edition.] The winter of 1635 is memorable in history because 

 of its severity. In the Thirty Years' war an imperial army of 5,000 men 

 crossed the Rhine on the ice opposite the city of Heidelberg, and in the win- 

 ter of 1794 and '95 the rivers of France and Holland were frozen over to con- 



