ON VINEYARDS. 



193 



It has been much disputed of late, whether the 

 various places in the different counties in England, 



less multiply, in any country to the south of the Baltic. * In 

 the time of Caesar, the rein-deer, as well as the elk and the 

 wild bull, was a native of the Hercynian forest, which then 

 overshadowed a great part of Germany and Poland, f The 

 modern improvements sufficiently explain the causes of the 

 diminution of the cold. These immense woods have been gra- 

 dually cleared, which intercepted from the earth the rays of 

 the sun.J The morasses have been drained ; and, in propor- 

 tion as the soil has been cultivated, the air has become more 

 temperate. Canada, at this day, is an exact picture of ancient 

 Germany ; although situated in the same parallel with the finest 

 provinces of France and England, that country experiences 

 the most rigorous cold. The rein-deer are very numerous, the 

 ground is covered with deep and lasting snow, and the great 

 river of St. Lawrence is regularly frozen, in a season when the 

 waters of the Seine and the Thames are perfectly free from 

 ice. § || 



t> " From the most early ages wine is mentioned by the his- 

 torians and poets, and seems to be almost coeval with the first 

 productions from vegetables : the grapes became, at first, a 

 useful part of their aliment, and the recent expressed juices a 

 cooling drink. These, by a spontaneous fermentation, soon 



* Buffon Histoire Naturelle, torn. xii. p. 79. 11*6. 



f Ccesar de Bell. Gallic, vi. 23. The most inquisitive of the 

 Germans were ignorant of its utmost limits, although some of 

 them had travelled in it more than sixty days journey. 



\ Cluverius (Germania Antiqua, lib. iii. chap. 47.) investi- 

 gates the small and scattered remains of the Hercynian wood. 



§ Charlevoix Histoire du Canada. 



\\ History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by 

 Edward Gibbon, Esq. vol.i. chap.ix. p. 218. 



O 



