Lake of Lanzon, on the 39 6797 mountain of Olan Switzerland Lake of Lucerne 40 1408 South America City of Riobamba, Quito 41 18,800 City of Quito 42 9356 North America City of Mexico 43 7424 Austria Town of Eisenerz 44 2056 Egypt The great Pyramid 45 477 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── WATER IN GENERAL. ─────── 273. WATER, generally speaking, is a transparent and nearly incompressible fluid, the component parts of which are two kinds of gas, called hydrogen (45) and oxygen (21). It is _liquid_ in the common temperature of our atmosphere, assumes a solid state under the denomination of _ice_, in a cold temperature (32° of Fahrenheit’s thermometer); and, by heat at 212°, is converted into an elastic vapour of almost incredible force, called _steam_. At any temperature betwixt these two points, it returns, unaltered, to its liquid state. The weight of water is about 816 times greater than that of atmospheric air. Water abounds in, and may be considered as, a kind of general cement to all solid bodies. It performs the most important functions both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and even enters largely into their composition. A chief part of the nutrition of vegetables is the water which they absorb from the earth through the pores of their roots. The great quantity so absorbed may readily be imagined, when it is stated that the driest and most compact kinds of wood, such as even heart of oak, when converted into charcoal, lose, during the process, full three─fourths of their weight; and that the fluid which escapes is nearly pure water. This fluid is found in the driest of solid bodies, whatever be their description. A piece of hartshorn kept for forty years, and thereby become as hard and dry as metal (so that if struck against a flint it would give sparks of fire), upon being distilled, was found to yield an eighth part of its weight of water. Every being with life, in a great degree, lives by it; and whatever grows, through it receives its growth; and wherever it enters, it promotes and sustains life, preserving the whole of created nature in their proper classes of existence. And whether we consider it as productive of health to animals and vegetables, as requisite to the existence and beauty of the earth, or as one of the great powers by which the Almighty works in the support of the world, we cannot but admire and adore the wisdom by which it has been ordained.