WATER 



107 



This unique property of water is the most 

 familiar instance of striking natural fitness of 

 the environment, although its importance 

 has perhaps been overestimated. 1 If, how- 

 ever, water, like all other common substances, 



1 It scarcely merits the curious rhapsody of Prout. for 

 instance: "The above anomalous properties of the expan- 

 sion of water and its consequences have always struck us as 

 presenting the most remarkable instances of design in the 

 whole order of nature — an instance of something done ex- 

 pressly, and almost (could we indeed conceive such a thing 

 of the Deity), at second thought, to accomplish a particular 

 object." — Prout, Bridgewater Treatise, "Chemical Meteor- 

 ology and the Function of Digestion." London, 1834, pp. 

 249-250. 



