_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.