PHYSICAL CLIMATE. 009 



And, while they strive in vain to make their way 

 Through hills of snow, and pitifully bray, 

 Assaults with dint of sword, or pointed spears, 

 And homeward on his back the joyful burden bears. 

 The men to subterranean caves retire, 

 Secure from cold, and crowd the cheerful fire : 

 With trunks of elms and oaks the hearth they load, 

 Nor tempt th 1 inclemency of heaven abroad." 



The allusions to the climate of Italy in the Georgics, referring to the Augustan age, are 

 in several respects irreconcilable with its present character. The writer speaks of the 

 freezing of the rivers in the southern part of the peninsula as an ordinary occurrence, 

 and gives frequent directions for the protection of sheep and goats from snow and frost, 

 as if addressing a shepherd of the plains of Holstein or the highlands of Scotland. It is 

 a well-attested fact, that the savage inhabitants of Gaul and Germany usually selected 

 the winter-season for their warlike incursions into the Roman provinces, on account of 

 the facility afforded by the ice for the transport of their armies, horses, and baggage, 

 across the great rivers, which have never been so frozen in modern times as to admit of 

 such an occurrence. In the time of Caesar, also, the rein-deer, now confined to the 

 colder regions north of the Baltic, was found, along with the elk and the wild bull, in the 

 Hercynian forest, which then overshadowed a great part of Germany and Poland. A 

 volume published at Vienna in 1788, contains some remarkable passages concerning the 

 state of the weather for more than a thousand years back, gathered from the old chroni 

 cles, which detail the state of the harvest, the quality of the vintage, or the endurance of 

 frost and snow in the winter. From this work, Sir John Leslie, in an article furnished 

 to one of the public journals, quoted the following record of excessive winters and 

 summers, to which some additions have been made. 



EXCESSIVE WINTERS. 



In A. D. 401, the Black Sea was entirely frozen over. 



Theodomer inarching his Army across the Danube. 



