WATER 85 



follows directly ; namely, that water possesses 

 certain nearly unique qualifications which 

 are largely responsible for making the earth 

 habitable, or at least very favorable as a 

 habitation for living organisms. 



It need hardly be pointed out that this 

 importance of the high heat capacity of water 

 is a very well-known fact. Even in the early 

 decades of the nineteenth century, when 

 natural theology and argument from design 

 were the subject of lively controversy, es- 

 pecially in England, such subjects were very 

 familiar, and an excellent temperate dis- 

 cussion from the theologian's side will be found 

 in Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise. 1 At that 

 time, before a clear formulation of the concept 

 of adaptation existed, it was of course impos- 

 sible to disentangle such natural fitness from 

 the results of the organic evolutionary process. 

 In the more modern period since the publi- 

 cation of "The Origin of Species," the late 

 Professor J. P. Cooke of Harvard has dwelt 

 upon this and other properties of water 

 and sought to show that, lying wholly apart 

 from the new ideas, such phenomena remain 



1 Chapter IX of this work deals with "The Laws of Heat 

 with Respect to Water." Although the ideas are somewhat 

 vague, the importance of the capacity of water to absorb 

 heat is clearly brought out. 



