414 MUSCULAR MOTION. 



down, and attached to these ropes, whilst the woman herself bent her 

 head back towards the stone for the purpose of admitting of the traces 

 being fastened. When this was done, she slowly rose to her erect 

 position, lifting the stone entirely from the ground, its weight being 

 borne by the seven traces of her hair, and the pressure resting wholly 

 on her scalp. She then began to turn herself slowly round, swinging 

 the stone just fastened to her hair, until, by the progressively increas- 

 ing motion, she twirled round as rapidly as the spinning dervishes, or 

 an opera dancer in a pirouette, but for a longer period, the stone all 

 this while going out farther and farther from her person till it swung 

 round almost horizontally, and with a velocity that made it fearful to 

 look upon, relaxing gradually from the highest point of motion till it 

 rested at her feet. It was then loosened from the hair and the cords ; 

 and her next feat was to place two rush-bottomed chairs at a distance 

 of about four feet and a half from each other, when she placed her 

 head on one, and her heels on the other, thus lying horizontally between 

 the two, without any support for her back or loins in the centre, and 

 neither her head nor her heels being more than six inches from the 

 outer edge of the chairs. Whilst in this condition, two men were invited 

 to come from the crowd and lift up the stone, so as to place it on her 

 stomach. Two persons came from amongst the bystanders, and one of 

 them not being a strong man, they were unable to lift it, when a third 

 came to their assistance ; but not till after at least twenty persons had 

 tried to lift the stone a little from the ground, to be assured it was not 

 hollow, and that there was no deception, and each had failed to lift it half 

 an inch from where it stood. The three men, however, raised it up, 

 and placed it on the woman's stomach, as she lay in this horizontal 

 position ; when another person, at her request, placed a smaller stone 

 on the large one, and with a heavy iron sledge-hammer broke it into 

 twenty pieces. All this occupied about a quarter of an hour, during 

 the whole of which time the woman evinced no appearance of shrinking ; 

 and in conversing with her after she rose there was not the slightest 

 evidence of any inconvenience being felt by her from the exertion. 



That much depends upon physical organization, as regards the force 

 of muscular contraction, is evinced by the fact of the great difference 

 in the various races of mankind. On our own continent, numerous 

 opportunities have occurred for witnessing the inferiority, in strength, 

 of the aborigines to the white settlers. Pe'ron 1 took with him, in his 

 voyage round the world, one of Regnier's dynamometers, which indicate 

 the relative force of men and animals. He directed his attention to 

 the strength of the arms and loins, making trial on several individuals 

 of different nations ; twelve natives of Van Diemen's Land ; seventeen 

 of New Holland ; fifty-six of the island of Timor ; seventeen Frenchmen 

 belonging to the expedition, and fourteen Englishmen in the colony of 

 New South Wales. The following was the mean result : 



1 Voyage, &c., torn. i. chap. xx. p. 446; and t. ii. p. 461; and Lawrence's Lectures on 

 Physiology, &c., p. 404, Lond., 1819. 



