Amador ledger. (Jackson, Amador County, Calif.) 1875-19??, 1908-07-03
NAN IS A pooh THING At BEST.

BY the aid of mechanical instru-
neuts, the product of his brain, man
AN sweep along a prepared truck at
20 miles hour or glide over the
urface of The sea at about forty
uiles. lie can also build towers
learly 200 times as high as himself or
1urrow into the crust of the earth to
depth equal to about 700 times his
jwn height.
But strip man of his machine
made Instruments, weapons and
lothes and the lord of creation is
ioor thing at best. An ape weighing
xty pounds is far more than match
'iuglehnndod for an unarmed man of
hree times his weight, says the Balti-
uore Sun.
Take man s powers of running.
j is best speed for a mile is minutes
va seconds, which works out at
bout Ii miles an hour. That COM
non beast of prey, the gray wolf,
opes along at an easy 20 and thinks
nothing of covering 60 miles in
night. The hunted foy has been
timed to run two miles at a speed of
70 miles an hour. A race horse at
'ull speed travels ~ miles, while a
grey hound, which is, so far as known,
he swifest of all legged animals,
runs at "a miles.
In jumping we are equally behind
hand. Roughly speaking, six feet in
height aud % in width are the limit
Of mans achievements. A red deer
has been known, to clear wall
III feet high, the channels can do
ut least foot higher, while as for
the springbok OF the South African
veldt this creature will shoot ~ feet
up in the air just for the fun of the
thing. Some of the beasts of prev are
even more wonderful in their ordinary
athletic performances. The black
laguar. for instance, can reach
branch IA feet from the ground. The
greatest jumper on earth Is the
Kangaroo. The sort known as the
"old man" has been seen to clear
deadwood fences 10 to l2 feet high,
while 1t can leap with ease a width
of so to 60 feet. The record width
cleared by horse is about 81 feet,
while the ostrich in running clears
% feet at stride.
The athletic achievements of fish
are very wonderful. 10 see a salmon
leap on perpendicular fall five or
SIX feet high is most ordinary sight.
Many of the predatory fishes can
travel at the speed OF torpedo boat.
lhe writer has stood i'll the bow of a
steamer travelling at fourteen knots
and watched shoal of porpoises
gliding along under the cutwater
Every now ana then, apparently tor
the sake Of exercise, one of them
would break away from the rest and
make a complete circuit of the NOV
ing steamer as quickly and easily as
though the ship were standing still.
Even if man perfects flying ma
chime it will be very long time be-
fore he can hope to rival the feats Of
the birds. A dozen different birds
nave been credited with speeds of
sixty miles an hour and more, but il
is only lately that definite expert
ment has proved that the swallow is
far swifter than the wild duck or
carrier pigeon. a hen swallow was
taken from its nest in an Antwerp
railway station and sent in basket
by express to Compiegne, a distance
of l4619 miles. There, at $50 in the
morning, she was liberated. AT 8 3B
the bird was seen to arrive at her
nest. Work this out and you will
find that the tiny creature travelled at
the rate Of 1879 feet second equal to
l29 miles an hour. At this rate it
would take swallow only half day
to fly from Belgium to North Africa.
In the matter of muscular strength
man is not quite so far behind the
rest of the animal world, for trained
athletes have achieved wonderful
feats Of lifting. Still where would
you find man who could run up n
mountain side carrying two others as
heavy as himself? A grizzly bear has
been seen to carry bullock twice
his own weight up an incline of one
in three.