ts utmost limits, although some of them
had travelled in it more than sixty days' journey. * Note: The passage
of Caesar, "parvis renonum tegumentis utuntur," is obscure, observes
Luden, (Geschichte des Teutschen Volkes,) and insufficient to prove the
reindeer to have existed in Germany. It is supported however, by a
fragment of Sallust. Germani intectum rhenonibus corpus tegunt.--M. It
has been suggested to me that Caesar (as old Gesner supposed) meant the
reindeer in the following description. Est bos cervi figura cujus a
media fronte inter aures unum cornu existit, excelsius magisque directum
(divaricatum, qu?) his quae nobis nota sunt cornibus. At ejus summo,
sicut palmae, rami quam late diffunduntur. Bell. vi.--M. 1845.]

[Footnote 6: Cluverius (Germania Antiqua, l. iii. c. 47) investigates
the small and scattered remains of the Hercynian wood.]

[Footnote 7: Charlevoix, Histoire du Canada.]

It is difficult to ascertain, and easy to exaggerate, the influence of
the climate of ancient Germany over the minds and bodies of the natives.
Many writers have supposed, and most have allowed, though, as it should
seem, without any adequate proof, that the rigorous cold of the North
was favorable to long life and generative vigor, that the women were
more fruitful, and the human species more prolific, than in warmer or
more temperate climates. [8] We may assert, with greater confidence,
that the keen air of Germany formed the large and masculine limbs of the
natives, who were, in general, of a more lofty stature than the people
of the South, [9] gave them a kind of strength better adapted to violent
exertions than to patient labor, and inspired them with constitutional
bravery, which is the result of nerves and spirits. The severity of
a winter campaign, that chilled the courage of the Roman troops, was
scarcely felt by these hardy children of the North, [10] who, in their
turn, were unable to resist the summer heats, and dissolved away in
languor and sickness under the beams of an Italian sun. [11]

[Footnote 8: Olaus Rudbeck asserts that the Swedish women often bear
ten or twelve children, and not uncommonly twenty or thirty; but the
authority of Rudbeck is much to be suspected.]

[Footnote 9: In hos artus, in haec corpora, quae miramur, excrescunt.
Taeit Germania, 3, 20. Cluver. l. i. c. 14.]

[Footnote 10: Plutarch. in Mario. The Cimbri, by way of amusement, often
did down mountains of snow on their broad shields.]