THE 



EDINBURGH 

 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



Art. I. — Account of an Orang Outang, of remarkable height, 



from the Island of Sumatra. By Clarke Abel, M. D. 



Communicated in a letter to Dr Brewster. With a Plate. 



Dear Sir, 



I have great pleasure in sending you a notice respecting 

 an Orang Outang, of remarkable height, from the island 

 of Sumatra. The notice is taken from a paper which I 

 had lately the honour of reading to the Asiatic Society, 

 and which will be published in the forthcoming volume 

 of its transactions. I have little to remark, in addition 

 to what the notice contains, except that the youth of the 

 animal was equally proved by the state of its teeth, and 

 by the apophysis of the bones of its hands and feet being in- 

 completely ossified. The general conclusions to which I have 

 come, from a consideration of all the circumstances I have 

 collected respecting this animal, is,— that it is identical with 

 the Orang Outang, described by Wurmb in the Batavian 

 Transactions ; that Cuvier is right in considering Wurmb's 

 animal as the adult of the young eastern orangs seen in 

 Europe ; but that he is mistaken in supposing that it is also 

 the adult of the African species. These are points, however, 

 which require more time and materials than I at present pos- 

 sess, to establish ; for, as I have great hopes of obtaining an- 

 other specimen of the Sumatra animal in a perfect state, I 



VOL. IV. NO. II. APRIL 1826. N 



