290 Epidemics. 



suffered it to be used as a matter of common illustration of 

 subjects not otherwise so well understood. 



Again, to speak of the coast of Greenland, now encom- 

 passed, ten, twenty, and thirty miles from shore, with 

 a belt of ice, being in 982 A.D, perfectly free from ice, and in 

 1 121 A.D. a bishopric appointed by Sigard, King of Norway, 

 and in a short time having sixteen churches, one hundred 

 and ninety hamlets, and two convents, appears equally in- 

 credible ; but by the year 1408 ice so far increased round 

 the coast, that Norway and Denmark ceased to count Green- 

 land as a colony of any practical utility, and as utterly 

 beyond the reach of maritime adventure.* 



The Bosphorus was ice-worthy from land to land in 764, 

 and 860 the Adriatic was frozen. 



The Thames and the Baltic, and many rivers in England, 

 were frozen between 1063 and 1683, especially from 1407 to 

 1683, and again in 1789 and 1814. 



For the first four centuries of the Christian era the 

 climate of England was not very inferior to that of Italy, 

 and most of the fruits, especially the vine, which are 

 peculiar to Southern Europe and Central Germany, were 

 commonly grown in this country in the open air, and came 

 to great perfection ; but as a wine-producing country, for 

 more than a thousand years, England has been as barren in 

 this produce as the Isle of Skye or the coast of Finland. 



From these and many other considerations, too numerous 

 to be mentioned, it may be generally affirmed that within 

 3,000 to 4,000 years the more southern, and, proximally, the 

 regions nearer the equator, have become hotter than in 

 former times, and the more northern regions have become 

 increasingly colder, with very marked and irregular excep- 

 tions, as in the years for this country of 1826 and 1868 ; but, 

 be it understood, without any perceptible change in the 



* See Scoresby's " Voyage to Greenland," 1823, introduction. 



