THE MAN-LIKE ATES. 37 



possess is that, based almost wholly on direct European 

 testimony, respecting the Gibbons ; the next best evidence 

 relates to the Orangs ; while our knowledge of the habits 

 of the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla stands much in need 

 of support and enlargement by additional testimony from 

 instructed European eye-witnesses. 



It will therefore be convenient in endeavouring to 

 form a notion of what we are justified in believing about 

 these animals, to commence with the best known man-like 

 Apes, the Gibbons and Orangs ; and to make use of the 

 perfectly reliable information respecting them as a sort of 

 criterion of the probable truth or falsehood of assertions 

 respecting the others. 



Of the Gibbons, half a dozen species are found scat- 

 tered over the Asiatic islands, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, 

 and through Malacca, Siam, Arracan, and an uncertain 

 extent of Hindostan on the main land of Asia. The 

 largest attain a few inches above three feet in height, 

 from the crown to the heel, so that they are shorter than 

 the other man-like Apes ; while the slenderness of their 

 bodies renders their mass far smaller in proportion even 

 to this diminished height. 



Dr. Salomon Miiller, an accomplished Dutch natural- 

 ist, who lived for many years in the Eastern Archipelago, 

 and to the results of whose personal experience I shall 

 frequently have occasion to refer, states that the Gibbons 

 are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the 

 hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the 

 fig-trees. All day long they haunt the tops of the tall 

 trees ; and though, towards evening, they descend in 

 small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they spy a 

 man than they dart up the hillsides and disappear in the 

 darker valleys. 



All observers testify to the prodigious volume of voice 



