Dr. Forry on the Climate of the United States, (^"c. 227 



tention to climatology, ransacking all the libraries to which we 

 have had access for works treating on this subject ; and we early 

 became satisfied that the universal opinion that modern win- 

 ters have experienced a material increase of temperature, has 

 no foundation in reality. As we have no exact instrumental 

 observations of temperature that go back much farther than a 

 century, our information in regard to more remote periods being 

 derived from loose notices scattered through the old chronicles 

 relative to the state of the harvest, the quantity of the vintage, 

 or the endurance of frost and snow in the winter, great allow- 

 ance must be made for the spirit of exaggeration which tinges 

 all rude historical monuments. It must be borne in mind that 

 the thermometer is a comparatively modern instrument, invented 

 in 1590, but still left so imperfect, that it was not till the year 

 1724 that Fahrenheit succeeded in improving it sufficiently to 

 warrant a comparison of ojpservations. It is not surprising that 

 one should hear continual complaints of the altered condition of 

 the seasons, especially from elderly persons, in whom the bodily 

 frame has become more susceptible to the impressions of cold ; 

 but similar lamentations, like the prevalent notion that men in 

 general were taller in the earlier ages of the world, have been 

 repeated by the poets and the vulgar from time immemorial. 



The facts stated by the Roman poets, if not exaggerated, 

 doubtless in many instances stand isolated, not unlike the cir- 

 cumstance recorded in relation to the Baltic, which in 1688 was 

 so firmly frozen that Charles XI of Sweden crossed it with his 

 army, or the similar fact that in the winter of 1779-80, horse 

 and artillery were transported over the ice in the harbor of New 

 York. We have elsewhere clearly established from historical 

 evidence, but which is here precluded from want of space, that 

 the most remarkable extremes of heat and cold have been fre- 

 quently recurring ever since the time of the Romans referred to 

 above, the opinion of Gibbon to the contrary notwithstanding. 



Although in possession of the facts requisite to establish the 

 opinion that the climate of Europe has undergone no material 

 change since the era of Julius Cassar, yet it was not without con- 

 siderable hesitancy that we announced this conclusion in the face 

 of all the world. What then was our surprise in finding subse- 

 quently a remarkable coincident confirmation of this deduction 

 in the last work of that extraordinary man, Noah Webster, LL. D., 



