The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-08-28
SPEEDS OF THE WORLD

European engineer. Joseph o.
shausen, began about fifteen years ago
to measure the speeds of all creatures
that he could study. and as a result
he has collected a remarkable array
of facts, each one based on absolute
experiment, to show just how fast or
slow hundreds of animals are.
He has found that man can attain
remarkable speeds, but only by the use
of artificial aids. A good pedestrians
speed over good roads, he says, in six
tenths of a mile in twelve seconds. The
German soldier covers a little more
than three miles an hour during an or
binary march that does not last too
long. But after an eight days march
the distance covered in a whole day
often is only 1874 miles.
In quickstep, however, the same SOL
diers have covered five miles an hour.
In athletics, the best speed recorded
by the investigator was the initial We
locity acquired by a broad jumper.
who took the jump with speed that
carried him through the air at the rate
of 1893 inches in a second.
The maximum speed acquired by the
az dSS pei sui III swimming COMFORT
ably is 80 inches a second, while oars
men In an eight-oared barge acquire a
speed of 1877 inches in a second.
Skaters average from to 10 yards
second, while runners on skids have
made as much as "a yards in the same
time, and the jump on skds has de-
veloped almost 10 yards Velocity in a
second.
OF course. the latter velocity is
maintained only for a very short dis
lance. The man who made this record
jumped 120 feet.
Ice-boats skim over the ice at velec-
tiles that have reached 36 yards an
second, or more than a mile a minute
The fastest that has been done on a
bicycle is the record of 66 feet a Sec
ond.
The horse can galIop six miles in an
hour for a considerable length of time.
The swiftest dog in the world, the
borzoi or Russian wolf hound, has
made record runs that show speed of
20 feet in a second for a limited dis
lance, while the gazelle has shown
measured speed of more than so feet a
second, which would give her a speed
of 1890 feet in a minute if she could
keep it up for that distance.
The gazelle, however swift as she
is, is not as swift as the ostrich, for
that homely but swift bird can run 80
feet in a second when he really gets
down to 1t. But then he helps himself
along with his wings, which may not
be of much use for flying, but are ex-
ceedingly helpful in running.
The whale, struck by a harpoon and
sounding in terror, has been known to
dive at the rate of 300 yards in a min
ute.
A species of crow flies in great
swarms from the German mainland
over Heligoland every day, goes clear
to the English coast and returns again
every night. Close observation shows
that these birds habitually fly so miles
in three hours.
A species of falcon, known as the
wandering falcon, flies from North At
RIGA to Northern Germany in one un-
broken flight, making the distance in
IL hours.
The slowest creatures are snails and
certain small beetles. Some of them
habitually move only a foot or two in
an hour; but part of this slowness is
due to the fact that they remain mo-
tionless at intervals. By measuring
the distances covered by snails when
they were kept going constantly, it
has been found that the maximum
speed of a good healthy snail is Sc feet
an hour.
The ladybug is a perfect racehorse
compared with this, for it climbs a
blade of grass at the rate of almost
inches In a second, or nearly 10 feet
I'm a minute.
That speed, by the way. is exactly
the average rate of speed which Nan