MONKEYS II 



odd tricks with boy visitors, and howl horribly when told 

 to sing. 



A great contrast to the African chimpanzee is pre- 

 sented by the third anthropoid form of ape, the Asiatic 

 orang. It is red instead of blackish in colour, and its 

 arms are so long that they reach to the ankle when the 

 animal- stands erect. This it rarely, if ever, does spon- 

 taneously. It walks resting on its knuckles and the 

 outer edges of its feet, their soles being turned inward. 

 Thus resting on its hands, it uses its arms as a pair of 

 crutches, swinging the body and legs forward between 

 them. Its disposition is also very different from that 

 of the lively and petulant chimpanzee. Remarkably 

 calm, not to say languid, in its actions, it has in captivity 

 a curiously melancholy demeanour. Its high rounded 

 forehead, very different from the villanously low brows 

 of the chimpanzee and the gorilla, gives it a singularly 

 intellectual aspect, so that when we observe it pensively 

 squatting, with fat belly like an image of Gautama we 

 might fancy that the mind of some esoteric Buddhist 

 was imprisoned within the apish body, incapable of 

 making its latent existence known, and mutely contem- 

 plating the longed-for Nirvana. 



The orang is found nowhere in the world except in 

 Sumatra and Borneo, and even there only in lowland 

 humid forests, which supply it at once with shelter and 

 the vegetable food it loves. A solitary and peaceful 

 animal, it is ordinarily very slow and deliberate in its 

 movements. Nevertheless, when attacked, it can defend 

 itself with alacrity and effect, as the following anecdote 

 (from Wallace's " Malay Archipelago ") will show : " A 

 few miles down the river there is a Dyak house, and the 

 inhabitants saw a large orang feeding on the young 

 shoots of a palm by the river-side. On being observed, 



