^BO On the supposed Change 



countrymen, from the Midianites, informs us that their 

 enemies invaded the country in time of harvest, and car- 

 ried away or destroyed their corn for three years in suc- 

 cession : but permitted the IsraeUtes to ploxv their land m 

 winter, that they might furnish fruits of the earth for 

 their plunderers. The latter fact entirely overthrows the 

 opinion that anciently the winters were more rigorous - 

 than at present; for we see that it was customary to pre- 

 pare the land for seed in winter, as it is at this day. A 

 storm of hail or snow might happen occasionally in win-^ 

 ter, as it does now in South- Carolina and Georgia, but 

 the frost of ordinary years was not sufficient to imipede 

 the agricultural operations of winter. 



Appian relates that at the siege of Numantia in Spain^ 

 many Roman soldiers perished by cold and frequent hail 

 storms, about 145 years before the christian era. But 

 Numantia was situated in the center and mountainous 

 part of Spain, near the source of the Duro, where the 

 laws of nature require us to suppose a considerable de- 

 gree of cold in winter. Yet an anecdote related by Quin- 

 tilian, book 6, shows that in Tarracona, the country where 

 Barcelona is now situated, the climate must have been 

 as mild as at present. The people of Tarracona inform- 

 ed Augustus, that a palm tree was growing from his al- 

 tar. " From that I can judge, '^ replied the Prince, " how 

 often you use fire upon it." This story implies that 

 palm trees grew in the north of Spain,, and in the very 

 latitude of Numantia, on the eastern coast, which is 

 washed by the Mediterranean, 



In the first chapter of the second book of Maccabees,, 

 the Jews of Jerusalem recommend to their brethren in 

 Egypt to keep the feast of tabernacles in the month Cas- 

 leu, which answers to a part of November and Decem- 

 ber. This circumstance among others led Prideaux to 

 pronounce the epistles of the Jews in this chapter to be 

 spurious ; for, says that learned author, the Jews could 

 not, in the middle of winter, make such booths, as in 

 the feast of tabernacles ; they could neither find green 

 boughs enough, nor could they lie abroad in such booths 

 ^..Comiec. Part ii. b. 3. This argument is undoubtedly 

 founded on mistake ; for in a country where the plowing: 



