STATISTICS OF MUSCULAR POWER

Man has the power of imitating almost every motion but that of flight. To effect this, he has, in maturity and health, 60 bones in his head, 60 in his thighs and legs, 62 in his arms and hands, and 67 in his trunk. He has also 434 muscles. His heart makes 64 pulsations in a minute, and therefore 3840 in an hour, 92,160 in a day. There are also three complete circulations of his blood in the short space on an hour. In respect to the comparative speed of animated being, and of impelled bodies, it may be remarked that size and construction seem to have little influence, nor has comparative strength, though one body giving any quantity of motion to another is said to lose so much of its own. The sloth is by no means a small animal, and yet it can travel only fifty paces in a day; the worm crawls only five inches in fifty seconds; but a lady-bird can fly twenty million times its own length in less than an hour. An elk can run a mile and a half in seven minutes; an antelope a mile in a minute; the wild mule of Tartary has a speed even greater than that; an eagle can fly eighteen leagues in an hour; and a Canary falcon can even reach 250 leagues….