Mr. A. R. Wallace on the Habits of the Orang-Utan. 27 



where it is more exposed to danger, and where probably its 

 favourite food is less abundant. 



It is a singular and most interesting sight to watch a Mias 

 making his way leisurely through the forest. He walks delibe- 

 rately along the branches, in the semi-erect attitude which the 

 great length of his arms and the shortness of his legs give him : 

 choosing a place where the boughs of an adjacent tree inter- 

 mingle, he seizes the smaller twigs, pulls them towards him, 

 grasps them, together with those of the tree he is on, and thus, 

 forming a kind of bridge, swings himself onward, and seizing 

 hold of a thick branch with his long arms, is in an instant 

 walking along to the opposite side of the tree. He never jumps 

 or springs, or even appears to hurry himself, and yet moves as 

 quickly as a man can run along the ground beneath. When 

 pursued or attacked, his object is to get to the loftiest tree 

 near ; he then climbs rapidly to the higher branches, breaking 

 off quantities of the smaller boughs, apparently for the purpose 

 of frightening his pursuers. Temminck denies that the Orang 

 breaks the branches to throw down when pursued ; but I have 

 myself several times observed it. It is true he does not throw 

 them at a person, but casts them down vertically ; for it is 

 evident that a bough cannot be thrown to any distance from the 

 top of a lofty tree. In one case, a female Mias, on a durian 

 tree, kept up for at least ten minutes a continuous shower of 

 branches and of the heavy spined fruits, as large as 32-pounders, 

 whieh most effectually kept us clear of the tree she was on. She 

 could be seen breaking them off and throwing them down with 

 every appearance of rage, uttering at intervals a loud pumping 

 grunt, and evidently meaning mischief. 



When a Mias is once up a lofty tree, there is no danger of 

 his getting away, as he will not descend to the lower branches, 

 which he must do to pass to another tree. As soon as he feels 

 himself badly wounded he makes a nest, which, if he completes, 

 is so secure that he will never fall from it. I lost two Miases that 

 way, both dying on their nest, when I could not get any one to 

 climb up or cut down the tree till the next day, when putrefac- 

 tion had commenced. They choose a horizontal forked branch, 

 and breaking off all the branches in its neighbourhood, lay them 

 across one another till a complete leafy bed is made, which quite 

 hides them from below, and from which they will not move 

 afterwards. Their tenacity of life is very great, — from six to a 

 dozen bullets in the body being required to kill them, or make 

 them fall. 



Every night the Mias sleeps on a nest similar to that above 

 described, but smaller, and generally placed on a small tree, not 

 more than 50 or 60 feet from the ground. The same animal 



