150 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



two Malay tapirs (museum specimens) in 1820/ 

 On leaving Borneo M. M. Diard and Duvaucel 

 were permitted by Sir Stamford to bring home, 

 amongst other natural history curios, a skin and 

 skeleton of the Malay tapir: these historic specimens 

 were lodged in the Museum of the Jardin des 

 Plantes and are probably there yet, just as another of 

 Diard 's tapirs is still preserved at Leyden. Raffles 

 himself attempted to bring home a live specimen ; it 

 unfortunately perished in the loss of the "Fame," 

 with the clouded tiger already mentioned. On Sir 

 Stamford's arrival in England in 1824 he brought 

 with him the skin of a Malay tapir, and a complete 

 skeleton with viscera preserved in spirit. Raffles 

 presented the skeleton to the Museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons, where it stands to this day: 

 the viscera were dissected by Sir Everard Home, 

 V.P.R.S., the brother-in-law of John Hunter, and 

 himself an anatomist of distinction. On November 

 18, 1824, Home deliveed his Croonian Lecture on 

 the seal and Malay tapir; "a paper on tapir ' as 

 Punch would have expressed it. 



The Malay tapir inhabits Borneo and Sumatra 

 though not Java; it also occurs on the mainland in 

 the Malay Peninsula and in Burmah, being said to 

 be quite common in Tavoy. It is a dweller in the 



1 See the account of the zoological collection made for the East India 

 Company in Sumatra ; the animals collected by RafHes. Notice of collec- 

 tion communicated to the Linnean Society by Sir E. Home, December 5, 

 1820. 



