Ovid positively maintains, with all the serious affirmation of prose, that the Euxine Sea was frozen over every winter in his time, and he appeals to Roman governors, whom he names, for the truth of his assertion. This seldom or never happens at present in the latitude of Tomi, whither Ovid was banished. All the complaints of the same poet seem to mark a rigour of the seasons which is scarce experienced at present in Petersburg or Stockholm. Tournefort, a Provençal, who had travelled into the same countries, observes that there is not a finer climate in the world; and he asserts that nothing but Ovid’s melancholy could have given him such dismal ideas of it. But the facts mentioned by that poet are too circumstantial to bear any such interpretation. Polybius says that the climate in Arcadia was very cold, and the air moist. “Italy,” says Varro, “is the most temperate climate in Europe. The inland parts” (Gaul, Germany, and Pannonia, no doubt) “have almost perpetual winter.” The northern parts of Spain, according to Strabo, are but ill inhabited because of the great cold. Allowing, therefore, this remark to be just, that Europe is become warmer than formerly, how can we account for it? Plainly by no other method than by supposing that the land is at present much better cultivated, and that the woods are cleared which formerly threw a shade upon the earth and kept the rays of the sun from penetrating to it. Our northern colonies in America become more temperate in proportion as the woods are felled,​[92] but in general, every one may remark that cold still makes itself more severely felt both in North and South America, than in places under the same latitude in Europe. Saserna, quoted by Columella, affirmed that the disposition of the heavens was altered before his time, and that the air had become much milder and warmer. “As appears hence,” says he, “that many places now abound with vineyards and olive plantations which formerly, by reason of the rigour of the climate, could raise none of these productions.” Such a change, if real, will be allowed an evident sign of the better cultivation and peopling of countries before the age of Saserna;​[93] and if it be continued to the present times, is a proof that these advantages have been continually increasing throughout this part of the world.