OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

347

armies, their cavalry, and their heavy waggons,over a vast and solid bridge of ice.' Modernages have not presented an instance of a likephenomenon. 2. The rein-deer, that useful ani-mal, from whom the savage of the north derivesthe best comforts of his dreary life, is of a con-stitution that supports, and even requires, themost intense cold. He is found on the rock ofSpitzberg, within ten degrees of the pole; heseems to delight in the snows of Lapland andSiberia ; but at present he cannot subsist, muchless multiply, in any country to the south ofthe Baltic/ In the time of Csesar, the rein-deer,as well as the elk, and the wild bull, was a na-tive of the Hercynian forest, which then over-shadowed a great part of Germany and Poland . 0The modern improvements sufficiently explainthe causes of the diminution of the cold. Theseimmense woods have been gradually cleared,which intercepted from the earth the rays of thesun/ The morasses have been drained, and, inproportion as the soil has been cultivated, theair has become more temperate. Canada , at this

c Diodorus Siculus , 1. v, p. 340, edit. Wessel. Herodian, 1. vii, p,221. Jornaudes, c. 55. Ou the banks of the Danube , the wine, whenbrought to table, was frequently frozen into great lumps, frusta vini.Ovid Epist. ex Ponto, 1. iv, 7, 9,10. Virgil , Georgic. 1. iii, 355. Thefact is confirmed by a soldier and a philosopher, who had experiencedthe intense cold of Thrace. See Xenophon, Anabasis , 1. vii, p. 560,edit. Hutchinson.

d Bufifon Histoire Naturelle, tom. xii, p. 79, 116.

c Cassar de Bell. Gallic, vi. 23, &c. The most inquisitive of the Ger-man-; were ignorant of its utmost limits, although some of them had tra-velled in it more than sixty days journey.

f Cluverius (Germania Antiqua, 1. iii, c. 47) investigates the smalland scattered remains of the Hercynian wood.

CHAP.

IX.