Dr Forry on the Climate of the United States. 221 



trees were not first introduced into Judea by the Israelites 

 when they migrated from Egypt, is evident from the single 

 fact, that they found in the plains of Moab, and in the vici- 

 nity of JerichO; the most luxuriant palm-trees. Even the 

 word Jericho, which is called in Deuteronomy " the city of 

 palm-trees," signifies in the Ethiopic, according to Dr Web- 

 ster, a palm-tree. " We have then," says Dr W., from these 

 and other facts adduced, " certain proof that Palestine, more 

 than 3000 years ago, was a milder climate than Italy, milder 

 than the south of France, as mild as the coast of Africa at 

 that time, and milder than South Carolina at this day.*' 



It is by the same summary mode of argument, that Dr W. 

 dismisses the seeming facts adduced by the Abbe Du Bos, 

 Gibbon, Hume, Williams, and others, from the writings of 

 Homer, Virgil, Pliny, Juvenal Livy, ^lian, Horace, and Ju- 

 lius Caesar. In regard to what writers have recorded of the 

 winters of ancient Gaul and Germany, our own views, given 

 in detail elsewhere, find a singular confirmation in those of 

 Dr Webster. The remark of Gibbon, already quoted, refer- 

 ring to the freezing of the Rhine and Danube, that " modern 

 ages have not presented an instance of a like phenomenon," 

 he says, " is contrary to all historical evidence, and even to 

 facts which took place during that authoi-'s life." 



Dr W. dwells particularly upon the vegetables which flou- 

 rished in the Augustan age in Gaul ; and these evidences he 

 regards as our own safest guides. He concludes with the 

 following striking remark : " Olives grow and mature there 

 (the south of France), precisely within the limits marked by 

 Strabo and Pliny ; and, as far as we can judge, not a league 

 farther noj'th than they did 1800 years ago." But as re- 

 spects the influence of temperature on the geography of 

 plants, Dr W.'s remarks are defective, in consequence of his 

 limiting his comparisons to the mean annual temperature of a 

 locality, which is entirely subordinate to the distribution of 

 the tempei'ature among the different months of the year. It is 

 true De Candolle had not written in 1799 ; but in publishing 

 in 1843, it should not have been forgotten that a new era 

 had arisen in meteoi-ology. 



Dr Webster's final conclusion from this extensive and most 



