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Of late years, there has fortunately been no appearance of this horrible disease. It was at the time imputed to an extraordinary drought, attended by an uncommon heat and stillness of the air, which, being without motion, and confined as it were in a narrow channel, became putrid and pestilential. The vent de bize is perhaps a greater blessing to this country than it has been imagined.
M. Tournal stated in his memoir that in the cavern of Bize, in the department of the Aude, he had found human bones and teeth, together with fragments of rude pottery, in the same mud and breccia cemented by stalagmite in which land-shells of living species were embedded, and the bones of mammalia, some of extinct, others of recent species.
The flints worked by the cave-men of Belgium, the fossil shells so numerous at Chaleux, in the Frontal and Nuton caves, at Thayngen on the frontier between Switzerland and Germany, in Italy, in the stations of anterior date to the TERREMARE beds, have been found the shells of the pearl oyster of the Indian Ocean, whilst in the caves of the south of France, such as the Madeleine, that of Cro-Magnon, Bize in Herault, and Solutre on the banks of the Saone have been picked up the shells of Arctic marine mollusca.
My opinion is daily receiving confirmation, for every thing belonging to the last age is daily coming again into fashion, and I hope soon to see totally expelled all those fashions of Greece and Rome, which did admirably well under the climate of Rome or Messina, but are ill adapted for our vent du bize and cloudy atmosphere.
There is one heavy detraction, however, from the excellence of the Avignonese climate. This is the wind denominated the Vent de Bize. The peculiar situation of Avignon, at the mouth of a long avenue of mountains, gives rise to this wind: it collects in the narrow channel of the mountains, and bursts, as from the mouth of a barrel, on the town and plain.
There are no fogs and vapours as is usual in the northern kingdom: the spring is a continuance of such weather as is seen in England about the middle of May. The harvest begins about the latter end of June, but is sometimes so late as the middle of July; it continues a month. The vent de bize is very rare in these provinces.
In the cavern of Bize, in the south of France, and in the caves of Engis, Engihoul, Chokier, and Goffontaine, near Liége, human bones and teeth, together with fragments of rude pottery, have been found enveloped in the same mud and breccia, and cemented by stalagmite, in which are found also the land shells of living species and the bones of mammalia, some of extinct, and others of recent species.
Aix is situated in a bottom, almost surrounded by hills, which, however, do not screen it from the Bize, or north wind, that blows extremely sharp in the winter and spring, rendering the air almost insupportably cold, and very dangerous to those who have some kinds of pulmonary complaints, such as tubercules, abscesses, or spitting of blood.
The chemical condition of all the bones was found to be the same. Quite a full account is given of the researches of MM. Journal and Christol in the Bize cavern, and of Dr. Schmerling in the Liége caverns, and every effort made, apparently, by the author, to weigh candidly and honestly the evidence for and against the contemporaneous existence and deposition of the human and mammalian remains.
A few years later, Tournal announced his discoveries in the cave of Bize, near Narbonne, in which, mixed with human bones, he found the remains of various animals, some extinct, some still native to the district, together with worked flints and fragments of pottery.
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