228 Dr. Forry on the Climate of the United States, ^c. 



entitled "A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral 

 Subjects," published in 1843. One of the papers is " On the 

 supposed Change in the Temperature of Winter,''^ which, con- 

 taining forty four octavo pages, consists of two distinct essays, 

 read before the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences — the 

 first in 1799, and the supplementary remarks in 1806.* 



In this investigation Dr. Webster commences with the dawn 

 of history. From several passages in the Scriptures of equivocal 

 import, written as early as the days of Moses and David, it has 

 been hastily concluded that the climate of Palestine or Judea has 

 undergone a most remarkable melioration. But the fallacy of 

 this inference he establishes most conclusively, proving that the 

 climate of Palestine has experienced no increase of temperature 

 for more than three thousand years. In every part of the Bible 

 mention is made of olives, figs, and pomegranates ; and even in 

 the time of Moses, the spies sent to,explore the country came 

 back laden with figs and pomegranates. According to Pliny, 

 " Judea is particularly renowned for palm-trees or dates ;" and 

 that these trees were not first introduced into Judea by the Israel- 

 ites when they migrated from Egypt, is evident from the single 

 fact that they found in the plains of Moab and in the vicinity of 

 Jericho the most luxuriant palm-trees. Even the word Jericho, 

 which is called in Deuteronomy "the city of palm-trees," signi- 

 fies in the Ethiopic, according to Dr. Webster, a palm-tree. " We 

 have, then," says Dr. W., from these and other facts adduced, 

 " certaiti proof that Palestine, more than three thousand years ago, 

 was a milder climate than Italy, milder than the south of France, 

 as mild as the coast of Africa, at that time, and milder than South 

 Carolina at this day." 



It is by the same summary mode of argument that Dr. W, dis- 

 misses the seeming facts adduced by the Abbe Du Bos, Gibbon, 

 Hume, Williams, and others, from the writings of Homer, Virgil, 

 Pliny, Juvenal, Livy, ^lian, Horace, and Julius Ctesar. In re- 

 gard to what writers have recorded of the winters of ancient 

 Gaul and Germany, our own views, given in detail elsewhere, find 

 a singular confirmation in those of Dr. Webster. The remark of 

 Gibbon, already quoted, referring to the freezing of the Rhine 



* These Essays were published in New Haven, A.D. 1810, constituting the first 

 article in the "Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences," Vol. I, 

 part 1, pp. 216, 8vo.— Eds. 



