Now, if water did not possess this peculiarity of being heaviest at the particular temperature of 40 degrees--if it contracted according as it was cooled, up to the moment of freezing, as almost all other liquids do, what would be the result? The cold wind acting on the surface of the lake, and the water becoming heavier by being cooled, the circulation would continue until all the water had been cooled to the point at which it freezes. The ice would then form indifferently in all portions of it, at the bottom and in the centre, as well as on the surface; and by the continued action of the source of cold, the wind, the whole mass of water in the lake would be frozen into a solid block of ice. The watery sap in the vessels of the aquatic plants, the blood in fishes and other animals inhabiting the water, would be equally frozen, and all these living beings consequently killed. Further, on the approach of summer, by the first heating action of the air and sun, a layer of ice, of a few inches thick upon the surface, would be melted, but the water thus produced would, by being impenetrable to heat, prevent the great body of ice below from being affected. Just as, in reality, the cold water at the surface prevents the warmer water below from being cooled, so then it would prevent the colder ice below from being warmed; and hence the heats of summer passing over without the melting process extending beyond a few feet in depth, the first cold days of the next winter would solidify all again. In every country, therefore, where at present water is frozen at all in winter, we should have there established the reign of perpetual frost. By the presence of such large masses of ice, the temperature of the ground would be so much reduced, that, in place of the rich herbage of our meadows, and the luxuriant produce of our corn-fields, we should have our country yielding a scanty support to wandering herds of deer, in the mosses and lichens that could be scraped up from beneath the snow. The oaks, the beeches, the horse-chesnuts, which give such beauty to our sylvan scenery, would disappear, and the monotony of wildernesses of the Scotch fir and of the spruce would be varied only by patches of stunted birch. The countries nearer the tropics would be gradually brought into the same condition, by the depression of their mean temperature; and thus, in a short time after water had ceased to possess this peculiar property, the whole surface of the globe would be reduced to the condition of which we now happily only read in the tales of the arctic voyagers; and all commerce, manufactures, and civilization, would be banished from the earth. Of such value is this little peculiarity of water!