IRRITABILITY, AND MUSCULAR POWER. 



11 



tioned by Desaguliers, could lift 800 pounds. He rolled up a strong pewter 

 dish with his fingers. He lifted with his teeth and knees a table six feet long, 

 with a half hundred weight at the end. He bent a poker, three inches in 

 circumference, to a right angle, by striking it upon his left forearm ; another he 

 bent and unbent about his neck, and snapped a hempen rope two inches in 

 circumference. A few years ago there was a person at Oxford who could 

 hold his arm extended for half a minute,, with half a hundred weight hanging 

 on his little finger."* W e are also told by Desaguliers of a man who, by bend- 

 ing his body into an arch, and having a harness fitted to his hips, was capable of 

 sustaining a cannon weighing two or three thousand pounds. And not many 

 winters ago, the celebrated Belzoni, when first entering on public life, exhi- 

 bited himself to the theatres of this metropolis, and by a similar kind of har- 

 nessing was capable of supporting, even in an upright position, a pyramid of 

 ten or twelve men surmounted by two or three children, whose aggregate 

 weight could not be much less than 2000 pounds ; with which weight he 

 walked repeatedly towards the front of the stage. 



The prodigious powers thus exerted by human muscles will lead us to be- 

 hold with less surprise the proofs of far superior powers exerted by the 

 muscles of other animals, though it will by no means lead us to the means of 

 accounting for such facts. 



The elephant, which may be contemplated as a huge concentration of 

 animal excellencies, is capable of carrying with ease a burden of between 

 three and four thousand pounds. With its stupendous trunk (which has been 

 calculated by Cuvier to consist of upwards of thirty thousand distinct mus- 

 cles) it snaps off the stoutest branches from the stoutest trees, and tears up 

 the trees themselves with its tusks. How accumulated the power that is lodged 

 in the muscles of the lion ! With a single stroke of his paw he breaks the back- 

 bone of a horse, and runs off with a buffalo in his jaws at full speed : he 

 crushes the bones between his teeth, and swallows them as a part of his food. 



Nor is it necessary, in the mystery of the animal economy, that the muscles 

 should always have the benefit of a bony lever. The tail of the whale is 

 merely muscular and ligamentous; and yet this is the instrument of its chief 

 and most powerful attack ; and, possessed of this instrument, to adopt the 

 language of an old and accurate observer,! " a long-boat he valueth no more than 

 dust, for he can beat it all in shatters at a blow." The skeleton of the shark 

 is entirely cartilaginous, and totally destitute of proper bone ; yet is it the 

 mfest dreadful tyrant of the ocean : it devours with its cartilaginous jaws 

 >yhatever falls in its way ; and in one of its species, the squalus carcharias, 

 or white shark, which is often found thirty feet long, and of not less than 

 four thousand pounds weight, has been known to swallow a man whole at a 

 mouthful. 



The sepia octopodia, or eight-armed cuttlefish — the polypus of Aristotle 

 —is found occasionally of an enormous size in the Mediterranean and 

 It^ian seas, its arms being at times nine fathoms in length, and so prodi- 

 gious in their muscular power, that when lashed round a man, or even a New- 

 foundland dog, there is great difficulty in extricating themselves ; and hence 

 the Indians never venture out without hatchets in their boats, to cut off the 

 animal's holders, should he attempt to fasten on them, and drag them under 

 water. 



But this subject would require a large volume, instead of occupying the 

 close of a single lecture. Let us turn from the great to the diminutive. 

 How confounding to the skill of man is the muscular arrangement of the 

 insect class ! Minute as is their form, there are innumerable tribes that unite 

 in themselves all the powers of motion that characterize the whole of the 

 other classes ; and are able, as their own will directs, to walk, run, leap, 

 swim, or fly, with as much facility as quadrupeds, birds, and fishes 

 exercree these faculties separately. But such a combination of func- 

 tions demands a more complicated combination of motive powers; and what 



• Young's Lect. on Nat. PWI. i. 129. 



t Frederick Martens. See Shaw, U. ii. 489. 



