Many speculations have been entered into with regard to the relative natural aptitude of man for swimming compared to other animals. Man, we readily confess, labours under considerable inferi ority in this respect, though by experience he can at length attain to much greater perfection in the art than many of the lower animals. Fish of all kinds possess natural facilities for swimming, such as the air-bladder, or bodies flat and thin, or long and flexible, assisted in every case by the fins, which latter are peculiar to them. Water indeed is the element natural to fish; and their form and structure are wisely adapted by providence for an swering this purpose. The brute creation, though incomparably inferior to fish in this respect, are yet superior, at least during the first years of their existence, to the human race. They are, in the first place, incapable of fear, and in the second place, their head is exceedingly light in proportion to the rest of their body. It contains little brain, and it abounds in sinuses, so that its relative weight is so inconsiderable that they can easily keep their mouth and nose above water and respire freely. In man, on the contrary, the head, which
is full of brains, and contains no cavities, is ex ceedingly heavy compared with the rest of the body: and the great difficulty which he experiences in swimming is to counteract this specific gravity and keep the organs of respiration above water. To attain this object is the perfection of swimming; and when it has been attained, man, though pos sessed of natural disadvantages, is superior to all animals, except fish, in this nice and useful art.
See the treatise of Bernardi, which has not yet appeared in an English form, but of which an ex cellent abstract, combined with much new matter, may be found in the Quarterly Review, No. 67. See also the Philosophical Transactions for 1757, No. 50; Dr. Franklin's Essay on Swimming, and Thevenot Dart de .Nager. (T. M.)