Morning journal and courier., 1894-06-08
No. i37

the rivers are covered with foe. These descriptions of Italian climate apply ss 1t
 was eighteen centuries sgo.
 Ovid can be quoted In this connection also. We are writing from memory and
 with less fulness than we might could we turn to the authors books, but should any clsssicist be interested to follow us he will find that our recollection is es- ssntislly correct This poet was ban ished from Italy to Tomss by the enpe- TOT. This place is near the coast of the Euxine ses, and climatically includes the region round about Oonstantinople. He spent seven years in exile in this region, and he tells us that he saw Euxine or the Black sea covered with ice; that this Ice was not only strong enough to support men, but oxen and heavy slsds loaded with products. He states, moreover, that the wins of the country was often frozsn, ard that the snow tn many places in the forests was never fully melted during the entire summer. It is & well-establiehed fact that in the year 401 the Euxlne sea was frozsn over for twenty days together. This is certainly most extraordinary pic ture to one who has lived in this century in Constantinople or has knowledge of Its climate. The Alps and Apennines are the highest of European mountains. History has no stranger tale to tell than the march of HannibArs army over these lofty ranges. It Eas one of the wonders of antiquity. Livy and Polybius both bear repeated testimony to the sufferings of his troops from the terribly cold they encountered and the awful obstacles of the snow and Ice. But these mountains are easily passed to-day.
 Nor have the changes in the climate of Germany been less remarkable. A Latin historian records that in Csssr's time the Rhine and the Danube were not only frequently frczsn, but SO deeply fro- zen that the foe was able to uphold with out cracking the heaviest of weishts. He says that the bsrbsrisns-;he native Ger msns-chose the winter season for their campaigns, because they could then trans port their armies, cavalry and heavy wAg- ons along these rivers over 6 solid bridge of ice. And this Is precisely the state of things which, until recently, the New Enslsnd people have been accustomed to see-the picture of frozen rivers aud lakes used ss the highways of pleasure and the heaviest transportation. We might easily continue these quotations from the ancient authors in witness that the climate of both Asia and Europe has undergone 6 vast change in the last two thousand or three thousand years-a change SO profound that 1t has affected both the character and hab- its of the people and the products of these countries-a change which amounts to one degree for each hundred yesrs; but we have suggested enough to give direction to the popular thought touching 6 probable change in the climate of our own country. May 1t not be that the same cBuses which operated to modify the climate Of the ssst are new at work changing that of this western hemisphere, and that within one or two thousand years the palm and the date tree will be growing in the valleys of the Connecticut and the Merrimso, and the pomegranAte blossom on the shores of Lake Chsmplsin, while the Adirondscks and the White mountains EhRil be cov- cred with olivef May 1t not be that the American of the future shsll spsnd his summers under the orange groves of New Hampshire, and the hsbitants Of Quebec shall ship us our tea they pick it in the slopes of the L&urentiRn hillsi Verify, who may foretsll the changes tbst may come to New England and North America If the world w1ll only go op getting hotter and hotteri ". H. H. MURRAY