in the Temperature ofJVinter. 61 



tion ; or he must have intended to describe the piles of 

 everlasting snow upon the mountains ; or he must have 

 described some very extraordinary snows in severe win- 

 ters. E-\'ery man will at once perceive that no country 

 would be habitable in winter, where the common depth 

 of the snow should be ten feet upon a level. That the 

 country of Thrace and Scythia, to the Tanais or Don, 

 was inhabited by numerous tribes of men, who subsisted 

 by hunting- and pasturage, from the earliest times, is an 

 indisputable fact ; and the numerous flocks of cattle and 

 horses kept by the Nomadic Scythians, long before the 

 time of Virgil, is a powerful argument against the sup- 

 posed severity of the winters in their climate ; for they 

 did not cultivate the earth to any considerable degree ; and 

 if the winters were of six or eight months duration, as an- 

 cient authors pretend, how was it possible for them to 

 subsist their cattle ? 



The " semper hyems, semper spirantes frigora cauri" 

 of Virgil, must therefore be intended for Mount Rhodope, 

 which is still covered with snow the whole year, or it 

 must be a poetical fiction.* In the same light must we 

 view the representation Virgil gives of the mode of spend- 

 ing the winter in Scythia ; where, he says, the inhabit- 

 ants dug caves for their residence, and warmed them by 

 rolling whole oaks and elms upon their fires. This and 

 other parts of the description are evidently too high col- 

 ored. But most of the phenomena described by Virgil 

 and Ovid, are such as we observe in the northern parts 

 of this country ; and such as occur in New-England, in 

 winters of uncommon severity. If these v/ere the ordi- 

 nary phenomena of the cold in the countries along the 

 Danube, now comprehended in Bulgaria, Wallachia, 

 Bessarabia and Hungary ; and if such phenomena do not 

 now occur in ordinary years, there must have been a 

 change of climate. With regard to modern winters in 



* Virgil begins his description with the country about Rhodope, 

 but a part of it must refer to the polar regions, or be a poetical fic- 

 tion. Indeed the ancients had but little knowledge of the country- 

 north of the Danube, andconfounded various climates in general de- 

 scriptions. Herodotus however informs us, that the land along the 

 Boristhenes was very fruitful in corn. He also speaks of the Allowing 

 Scythians.... Sec his MelJio?nenc, 52, 53. 



