Mr Grant's account of an Orang-Outang from Borneo. 17 



asserted to have been that cf an orang-outang, by the man who 

 brought it over ; but I believe he did not see the animal to 

 which it belonged. I have every reason to fear that this spe- 

 cimen, along with that of the young female which I gave to Sir 

 Stamford Raffles, was lost in the destruction of the ship Fame. 



" Griffith, in his Animal Kingdom, *f mentions Malacca as 

 one of the habitats of the orang-outang ; but during my resi- 

 dence to the eastward I had never heard of one having been 

 found on any part of the Malay Peninsula, nor do the Malays 

 themselves consider it a native of these parts. Those with 

 whom I have conversed on the subject, however, had never 

 travelled far inland, their journey being confined to the banks 

 of the navigable rivers. The interior of the Peninsula is thin- 

 ly peopled by the Orang Benooa, a race of men very similar in 

 face and figure to the Malays of the sea coast, but they are Pa- 

 gans, speaking a different language, and having very little com- 

 munication with them ; and only when in want of rice or to- 

 bacco, descending to barter for these articles their Kayoo Garoo, 

 (Eaglewood,) Ratans, and other productions of their forests. It 

 is not likely that the conversations of such men would fall up- 

 on the subject of the natural history of the country, and there 

 are no doubt many animals unknown to Europeans, and even to 

 the Malays themselves, in the aboriginal forests of the country, 

 as a proof of which the existence of an animal of such a size as 

 the orang of Sumatra has only been just brought to our know- 

 ledge though the west coast of that island has been resorted to 

 by Europeans from the earliest period of European commerce 

 in the east." 



As to the orang-outang of Bontius, it appears to have been 

 a fabulous one, or, as Wurmb conjectures, a negro of Kakker- 

 lak * was mistaken for one. Wurmb, too, distinctly asserts 

 (which has been confirmed by after experience) that Pongos 

 and Jockos, or orang-outangs, came to Java exclusively from 

 Borneo, and that they were no more to be found on that island, 

 than the lions and elephants to be seen in some old maps of 

 Java. 



The orang-outang of the larger kind, or Pongo of BufFon, he 

 states, (see Bataman Transactions, vol. ii.) is not common 



* Chacrekis of BufFon. 

 VOL. IX. NO. I. JULY 1828. B 



