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It will be immediately feen that .the proofs of this 
aflertion mud depend upon accounts of the weather, 
and it’s effects in places, the lituation of which we 
know with fome precifion, and which may he com- 
pared with the common meteorological obfervations 
in the fame latitudes and fpots at prefent. 
If this fame queftion fhould be agitated two thou- 
fand years hence, it might receive an abfolute demon- 
ff ration ; as a journal of the changes in a well-con- 
flrudted thermometer would Ihew the temperature 
which prevailed in any particular place, during the 
prefent century. 
Nofuch accuracy can be expected from any paflages 
in the claffical writers $ but in order to Hate the altera- 
tion which may have happened in fo long a courfe of 
years, the moll proper method feems to be to com- 
pare their accounts with thofe of more modern tra- 
vellers, who have equally wanted the affiflance of a 
thermometer for their obfervations. 
I fhall for feveral reafons chiefly rely upon many of 
Ovid’s letters from Pontus (though he was not only 
a poet, but a writer of mod: glowing fancy, and ima- 
gination), in which he defcribes the effects of cold at 
Tom os * during his feven years relidence there, and 
afterwards contrail this defcription with that of later 
travellers. 
* It is fo called by Ovid, who refided there fo long and under- 
ftood the language of that country. It was however likewife 
ftyled Tomis and Tomi, the latter of which feems to have been 
the more general appellation, as the adjedtive formed from it is 
Tomitapus. Befides this, Ferrarius fuppofes it to be the fame 
wish the modern Temifware, molt evidently taken from the an- 
cient name in the time of Ovid. 
1 2 Ovid 
