Mr. A. R. Wallace on the Habits of the Orang-Utan. 31 



The separate species of which the organic world consists being 

 parts of a whole, we must suppose some dependence of each upon 

 all ; some general design which has determined the details, quite 

 independently of individual necessities. We look upon the 

 anomalies, the eccentricities, the exaggerated or diminished de- 

 velopment of certain parts, as indications of a general system of 

 nature, by a careful study of which we may learn much that is 

 at present hidden from us ; and we believe that the constant 

 practice of imputing, right or wrong, some use to the individual, 

 of every part of its structure, and even of inculcating the doctrine 

 that every modification exists solely for some such use, is an 

 error fatal to our complete appreciation of all the variety, the 

 beauty, and the harmony of the organic world. 



It is a remarkable circumstance, that an animal so large, so 

 peculiar, and of such a high type of form as the Orang-Utan, 

 should yet be confined to such a limited district, — to two islands, 

 and those almost at the limits of the range of the higher mam- 

 malia ; for, eastward of Borneo and Celebes, the Quadrumana and 

 most of the higher mammalia almost disappear. One cannot 

 help speculating on a former condition of this part of the world 

 which should give a wider range to these strange creatures, 

 which at once resemble and mock the " human form divine,^^ — 

 which so closely approach us in structure, and yet differ so 

 widely from us in many points of their external form. And 

 when we consider that almost all other animals have in previous 

 ages been represented by allied, yet distinct forms, — that the 

 bears and tigers, the deer, the horses, and the cattle of the 

 tertiary period were distinct from those which now exist, with 

 what intense interest, with what anxious expectation must we 

 look forward to the time when the progress of civilization in 

 those hitherto wild countries may lay open the monuments of a 

 former world, and enable us to ascertain approximately the 

 period when the present species of Orangs first made their ap- 

 pearance, and perhaps prove the former existence of allied species 

 still more gigantic in their dimensions, and more or less human 

 in their form and structure ! Some such discoveries we may 



exquisite textures of microscopic objects, more curiously regular than any- 

 thing which the telescope discloses ? To what purpose the gorgeous colours 

 of tropical birds and insects, that live and die where human eye never 

 approaches to admire them ? To what purpose the thousands of species 

 of butterflies, with the gay and varied embroidery of their microscopic 

 plumage, of which one in millions, if seen at all, only draws the admiration 

 of the wandering schoolboy ? To what purpose the delicate and brilliant 

 markings of shells which live generation after generation in the sightless 

 depths of ocean? Do not all these examples, to which we might add 

 countless others, prove that beauty and regularity are universal features of 

 the work of Creation in all its parts, great and small?" 



