120 ACANTHOPTERYGII. — SCOMBRID^. | 
a man while bathing in the Severn. It is by noil 
means an uncommon thing for this great and ; 
powerful fish to bury his weapon in the timbers i| 
of a ship, and perhaps some of the cases in which 
ships never heard of, and supposed to have gone 
down in stress of weather, may have been owing to 
an accident of this sort. It is probable, however^ : 
that such an encounter is, in most cases, fatal to the 
fish, for to pull out the sword from nine inches !i 
or more of solid timber, would need a greater ! 
effort than to drive it in, and would require that j 
force to be exerted under most disadvantageous 
conditions. For to give the blow, the animal is 
able to bring an impetus acquired by the exercise 
of his utmost powers of swimming, but to dis- 
lodge his firmly inserted brand, he must exert 
a backward force, for which his fins are but feebly 
adapted, and without the advantage of any ac- 
cumulated impetus. How great a force is re^ 
quired to perform the terrible feat we learn from i 
the report of the shipwrights, who examined the 
bottom of H.M.S. Leopard, which, on her return ! 
from a tropical cruise in 1725, was found to have 
the weapon of a Sword-fish imbedded in her tim- 
bers. They declared that to drive an iron pin 
of the same size and form to the same depth, 
it would require eight or nine strokes of a ham- 
mer of twenty-eight pounds weight. How mighty 
then must have been the muscular power of this 
fish, which had been able to perform such a feat I 
at a single stroke ! What adds to our admiration i 
is that from the position in which the sword had i 
penetrated, from the stern towards the bow, it ! 
was evident that the fish had followed the ship 
W’hen under sail ; so that the whole way of the 
