384 Scientific Intelligence. — Meteorology. 



difference of latitude, and the beneficial effects of a four months' 

 continued snow. This rigour of climate is so greatly at variance 

 with those interested reports which, in the hope of attracting 

 settlers to her new dominion, were circulated by the Empress 

 Catherine ; and it differs so wdely from that temperature, which 

 mio-ht be supposed to exist in the latitude of forty-six, in the 

 same parallel with Lyons and Geneva, — that, though the an- 

 cients observed and recorded it, the fact has been very slowly 

 admitted by the gencrahty of modern inquirers. Even among 

 those who yield a respectful attention to the authority of poets 

 and historians, many have been anxious to suppose, that the 

 peculiarity they describe has long since ceased to exist ; and 

 they have deduced from this supposed difference between the 

 ancient and modern climate of Scylhia, a proof that, by the de- 

 struction of forests, the draining of marshes, and the triumphant 

 progress of agriculture, the temperature not only of certain dis- 

 tricts, but of the earth itself, has been improved *. But how 

 far all or any of these changes may be able to produce effects so 

 extensive, as it may reasonably admit of doubt, so it is in the 

 present instance superfluous to inquire ; since in Scythia these 

 causes have never operated, and no apparent melioration of the 

 climate has taken place. The country still continues, for the 

 most part, in the wild state painted by Herodotus and Strabo ; 

 and all the countries bordering on the Euxine Sea are still sub- 

 ject to an annual severity of winter, of which (though in a far 

 higher latitude) the inhabitants of our own country can hardly form 

 an idea. That water freezes when poured on the ground ; that 

 the o-round is muddy in winter only where a fire is kindled ; that 

 copper kettles are burst by the freezing of their contents ; that 

 asses, being animals impatient of cold, are found here neither in 

 a wild nor tame state, — are circumstances no less characteristic of 

 modern Scythia, than of Scythia as described by Herodotus and 

 Strabo -f. Nor do I question the authority of the latter, when 

 he assures us, that the Bosphorus has been sometimes so firmly 

 frozen, that there has been a beaten and miry high-way between 

 Panticapaeum and Phanagoria ; or that one of the generals of 

 Mithridates gained there, during the winter, a victory with his 

 cavalry, where, the preceding summer, his fleet had been suc- 

 • Howard's Theory of the Earth. f Herodo. Melpom 88 — Strabo, L. vii. 



