Note 764 — Chapter V · (continued 2)

‘Dr. Black quickly perceived the vast importance of this discovery; and took a pleasure in laying before his students a view of the extensive and beneficial effects of this habitude of heat in the economy of nature. He made them remark how, by this means, there was accumulated, during the summer season, a vast magazine of heat, which, by gradually emerging, during congelation, from the water which covers the face of the earth, serves to temper the deadly cold of winter. Were it not for this quantity of heat, amounting to 145 degrees, which emerges from every particle of water as it freezes, and which diffuses itself through the atmosphere, the sun would no sooner go a few degrees to the south of the equator, than we should feel all the horrors of winter.’ Robison's Preface to Black's Lectures, vol. i. p. xxxviii.