32 QUADRUMANA. 



ning in its modes of pilfering, for " Tommy " soon acquired the art of 

 stealing. 



" If I opened my eyes," adds Du Chaillu, " while it was in the act 

 of committing theft, it all at once assumed an honest air and came to 

 caress me ; but I could readily detect it darting furtive glances towards 

 the bananas. 



" My cabin had no door, but was closed by a mat. Nothing could be 

 more comical than to see Tommy quietly raising a corner of this mat to 

 see if I was asleep. Sometimes I feigned to be so, and moved just at the 

 moment when it was carrying off the object of its covetousness, when it 

 let it drop, and ran off iji the greatest confusion." 



"Tommy" did not like sleeping alone; he watched until everybody 

 was asleep to creep furtively beside some negro friend ; and there would 

 sleep without stirring until daybreak, when he usually decamped before 

 found out. Several times he was caught in the act and beaten, but he 

 persevered. 



II.— GENUS SIMIA. 



The OranG-OUTAN, Simia Satyrus, (Plate I.) — The huge man-like 

 apes hitherto described are natives of Africa. But Asia produces 

 animals as large and fierce as any of the Western Peninsula. The 

 representative of the Asiatic anthropoids is the redoubtable Orang- 

 OUTAN. The body, in which the abdomen is very prominent, is broad 

 at the hips, the arms are long, the neck short, with a large pouch 

 which can be inflated. The hands and fingers are long, the lips are 

 swollen and protruding, the nose flat, the eyes and ears small and like 

 man's. In its terrible jaws the canines are prominent; the lower jaw is 

 longer than the upper jaw. The hair is thin on the back and breast, 

 but hangs long on the sides of the body; on the face it grows like a 

 beard ; on the back of the head and the fore-arm it is directed upwards, 

 elsewhere downwards. The color of the hair is a rusty red, sometimes 

 a brownish red, darker on the back and chest, lighter in the beard. The 

 skin, where visible, is a bluish grey. 



For our knowledge of the habits of this ape in his home, we are 

 indebted to the intrepid Wallace. The Orang-OUTAN, called also the 

 Meias, appears to be confined to Borneo and Sumatra, where it dwells 

 in low swampy woodlands. An extent of unbroken lofty forest is a 



