VOL. LVin;^ ' FHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 50^ 



Mr. B. chiefly relies on many of Ovid's letters from Pontus (though he was 

 not only a poet, but a writer of most glowing fancy and imagination), in which 

 he describes the effects of cold at Tomos, probably the modern Temisware, 

 during his 7 years' residence there, and afterwards contrast this description with 

 that of later travellers. Ovid was born at Sulmo in Italy, about 90 Roman miles 

 s.w. from the capital. He afterwards resided chiefly at Rome, and was there at the 

 time he received the emperor's orders for his immediate banishment : Mr. B. 

 therefore considers him as then leaving the 42d degree of northern latitude, the 

 climate in which he was born, and continued to live. He was thence removed 

 to Tomos, which Dr. Wells, in his maps of ancient geography, places only in 

 the 44th degree of northern latitude : the change was therefore only of 2 de- 

 grees, and yet Ovid immediately describes it as the winter of Hudson's bay, with 

 the Euxine sea frozen over, with people and cattle walking on it ; as well as 

 other instances of extreme cold. 1 



Besides the quotations from Ovid, Mr. B. gives several others from the an- 

 cients, as Virgil, Strabo, Pliny, &c. descriptive of the excessive cold of that 

 latitude. He then contrasts these with the accounts of modern travellers in that 

 country, who have not noticed any such severities of climate there. ; 



Mr. B. now leaving Tomos, compares the accounts of the weather in Italyj 

 with those of the present times: it being first premised, that the country was 

 better cultivated in the Augustan age than it is now, which should consequently 

 have made the temperature of the air more warm than it is now experienced to 

 be. He begins with some passages from Virgil's Georgics. This most excellent 

 husbandman is constantly advising precautions against snow and ice in the ma- 

 nagement of cattle; and he may be generally supposed to give these directions 

 for the neighbourhood of Naples, or Mantua his native country, where he does 

 not evidently from the context mean some other parts of Italy. Speaking after- 

 wards of Calabria, the most southern part of Italy, he expresses himself, with 

 regard to the rivers being frozen, as what was commonly to be expected. Pliny 

 too in a chapter, De natura coeli ad arbores, and speaking of Italian trees, says, 

 * Alioqui arborum frugumque communia sunt, nives diutinas sedere.' But per- 

 haps the strongest proof of that very remarkable fact, the Italian rivers 

 being constantly frozen over, is to be collected from a chapter in JEWan, 

 which consists entirely of instructions how to catch eels while the water is 

 covered with ice. Now, if we may believe the concurrent accounts of mo- 

 dem travellers, it would be almost as ridiculous to advise a method of catch- 

 ing fish in the rivers of Italy, which depended entirely on their commonly being 

 frozen over, as it would be to give such directions to an inhabitant of Jamaica. 

 Mr. B. cannot find that the precautions, which Virgil gives in his Georgics, 

 against the damage which sheep and goats mgh receive from the snow and 



