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120 a man while bathing in the Severn. It is by no means an uncommon thing for this great and powerful fish to bury his weapon in the timbers of a ship, and perhaps some of the cases in which ships never heard of, and supposed to have gone down in stress of weather, may have been owing to an accident of this sort. It is probable, however, that such an encounter is, in most cases, fatal to the fish, for to pull out the sword from nine inches or more of solid timber, would need a greater effort than to drive it in, and would require that force to be exerted under most disadvantageous conditions. For to give the blow, the animal is able to bring an impetus acquired by the exercise of his utmost powers of swimming, but to dislodge his firmly inserted brand, he must exert a backward force, for which his fins are but feebly adapted, and without the advantage of any accumulated impetus. How great a force is required to perform the terrible feat we learn from the report of the shipwrights, who examined the bottom of H.M.S. Leopard, which, on her return from a tropical cruise in 1725, was found to have the weapon of a Sword-fish imbedded in her timbers. They declared that to drive an iron pin of the same size and form to the same depth, it would require eight or nine strokes of a hammer of twenty-eight pounds weight. How mighty then must have been the muscular power of this fish, which had been able to perform such a feat at a single stroke! What adds to our admiration is that from the position in which the sword had penetrated, from the stern towards the bow, it was evident that the fish had followed the ship when under sail; so that the whole way of the