26 On the supposed Change 



has abandoned the cultivated parts of Europe. It is just 

 so with the common deer of North America, tlie bear,, 

 and other wild animals. The deer used to be found 

 along our sea coast, and on the neighboring islands ^ but 

 for fifty miles from the shore, at this day, not a deer is. 

 to be found;* and in a century, not a bear nor a deer 

 will be seen on the south of the lakes. But will any man 

 ascribe this desertion of the country to their love of cold? 

 Not at all. It is their love of the wild forest, and not of 

 cold, which impels them to recede before the arts of cul- 

 tivation. Hov/ could the rane subsist in an open, culti- 

 vated country, vdien it is well known that his favorite 

 food is a species of lichen [rangiferinus] which grows 

 only or chiefly on heaths and uncultivated hilly grounds ? 

 Instead of proving a chduge of climate, the retirement of 

 the rane seems to have been the natural consequence of 

 of cultivation. I 



But Gibbon's assertion that the Rhine and the Dan- 

 ube, in modern ages, have not been covered with ice^ 

 strong enough to sustain loaded carriages, must not pass 

 uncontradicted. I know not what ages precisely, that-, 

 author intended to include in the description of modern > 

 but both the rivers mentioned have often sustained men 

 and carriages on the ice within the two last centuries^ as- 

 "well as in preceding ages. In 821 and 994, history ex- 

 pressly mentions this to have been the fact. In 1233,. 

 the rivers, in Italy sustained the heaviest loads on the ice ; 

 of course the Rhine and Danube must have done the 

 same. The fact is also recorded of the year 1306 ; and. 

 in 1363 the Rhine was covered with solid ice for ten 

 weeks. In 1402 the Baltic was passable on the ice for 

 six' v/eeks ; and we may well suppose the Rhine and 

 Danube w^ere not open. I have no particular account of 

 the effects of the rigorous cold of 1608, 1610, 1664,. 

 1684, 1698, 1709, 1716, 1740, 1763, 1776, on those 



* These ariiraais found shelter in the immense barren plain on- 

 Lcng-Ib!and ; and are not yet driven from that spot by the hunters. 



t King Alfred, in relatinc; the story of Octher, v/ho seems to have 

 been a native of Sweden or Lapland, mentions 600 ranes as a part of 

 his wealth, and speaks of the animal as if he had never before heard 

 of it....^^//". Ores. lib. 1. 



