Mr Grant's account of an O rang- Outang from Borneo. 6 



ridge rises for the height of about an inch, between the ster- 

 num and pubis, in the direction of the linea alba. 



The nates are flattish*, and are bare of hair for a little space 

 round the anus. Between the buttocks there is not that well- 

 defined deep sulcus as in man, and the anus, instead of retiring 

 as in him, protrudes. 



The opening of the mouth is large, and the roof of it black. 

 His teeth are neither very white, nor what we should consider 

 in man a good set, but they are large and strong, though some- 

 what more separate, each from each, than we generally find in 

 the human jaw, which I consider to be mostly caused by the 

 youth of the animal. * There are ten teeth in each jaw, viz. 

 four molars, four incisors, and two canine ; the total in both 

 jaws being twenty teeth. Compared to the human jaw the in- 

 ferior maxilla of the orang is narrower, more massy, and having 

 less of a horse-shoe shape. According to our ideas of beauty, 

 too, the bone is defectively shaped at the symphysis, retiring 

 backward instead of coming forward, so as to constitute what 

 in man would be voted a bad chin. The lips too are different 

 from the human, no less in their form than in their office. 



If water is offered to the orang when he is thirsty he opens 

 his mouth, but instead of receiving the fluid at once within his 

 teeth, he protrudes his under lip an inch or two beyond the 

 teeth, pursing the integuments into a kind of hollow or cup, 

 where he receives the water, and whence he draws it into the 

 mouth proper. Both lips have a peculiar muscular action, by 

 which they serve somewhat the office of a proboscis in picking 

 up and holding things. Indeed, any person who has seen the 

 rhinoceros feed, cannot fail, I should suppose, to be struck 

 with the resemblance between the prehensile movements of its 

 labial muscles and those of the orang-outang, when he pro- 

 trudes them pointedly to examine or seize an object, -f* 



The following are the measurements of the animal, as taken 

 in October 1827 : 



Inches. 

 Height from vertex to heel, 26 



* In the jaw of the Great Suraatran orang-outang they are set close. 

 t Is not this muscularity and thickness of the upper lip peculiar to the 

 orang of Borneo ? — Note by Mr M. 





