P.T.W.
Muscular Strength.—It is asserted by travellers, that a Turkish porter will run along carrying a weight of 600 lbs. Milo, of Crotona, is said to have lifted an ox, weighing upwards of 1,000 Ibs. Haller mentions that he saw an instance of a man, whose finger being caught in a chain at the bottom of a mine, by keeping it forcibly bent, supported by that means the weight of his whole body, 150 lbs., till he was drawn up to the surface, a height of 600 feet. Augustus II., king of Poland, could with his fingers roll up a silver dish like a sheet of paper, and twist the strongest horse-shoe asunder. An account is given in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 310, of a lion who left the impression of his teeth upon a solid piece of iron. The most prodigious power of the muscles is exhibited by fish:—A whale moves with a velocity through the dense medium of water that would carry him, if he continued at the same rate, round the world in little more than a fortnight; and a sword-fish has been known to strike his weapon quite through the oak plank of a ship.