OF THE MAN-LIKE APES 227 



prefers Nibong Palms, Pandani, or one of those parasitic 

 Orchids which give the primeval forests of Borneo so 

 characteristic and striking an appearance. But wherever 

 he determines to sleep, there he prepares himself a sort 

 of nest : little boughs and leaves are drawn together round 

 the selected spot, and bent crosswise over one another ; 

 while to make the bed soft, great leaves of Ferns, of Orchids, 

 of Pandanus fascicularis, Nipa fruticans, etc., are laid over 

 them. Those which Miiller saw, many of them being very 

 fresh, were situated at a height of ten to twenty-five feet 

 above the ground, and had a circumference, on the average, 

 of two or three feet. Some were packed many inches 

 thick with Pandanus leaves ; others were remarkable only 

 for the cracked twigs, which, united in a common centre, 

 formed a regular platform. " The rude hut," says Sir James 

 Brooke, " which they are stated to build in the trees, 

 would be more properly called a seat or nest, for it has 

 no roof or cover of any sort. The facility with which 

 they form this nest is curious, and I had an opportunity 

 of seeing a wounded female weave the branches together 

 and seat herself, within a minute." 



According to the Dyaks, the Orang rarely leaves his 

 bed before the sun is well above the horizon and has dis- 

 sipated the mists. He gets up about nine, and goes to 

 bed again about five ; but sometimes not till late in the 

 twilight. He lies sometimes on his back; or, by way 

 of change, turns on one side or the other, drawing his 

 limbs up to his body, and resting his head on his hand. 

 When the night is cold, windy, or rainy, he usually covers 

 his body with a heap of Pandanus, Nipa, or Fern leaves, 

 like those of which his bed is made, and he is especially 

 careful to wrap up his head in them. It is this habit of 

 covering himself up which has probably led to the fable 

 that the Orang builds huts in the trees. 



Although the Orang resides mostly amid the boughs 

 of great trees, during the daytime, he is very rarely seen 

 squatting on a thick branch, as other apes, and particularly 

 the Gibbons, do. The Orang, on the contrary, confines 

 himself to the slender leafy branches, so that he is seen 

 right at the top of the trees, a mode of life which is closely 

 related to the constitution of his hinder limbs, and 

 especially to that of his seat. For this is provided with 

 no callosities, such as are possessed by many of the lower 

 apes, and even by the Gibbons ; and those bones of the 



