204 



NA TURE 



[December 29, 1904 



ethnology of Sarawak are one and all ignored. A few- 

 references are given to older publications or the 

 Sarcncak Gazette, and to some of the papers based on 

 the collections sent home by Dr. Beccari. The reader 

 must consequently bear in mind that there is a con- 

 siderable amount of information about the animals and 

 people of Sarawak which, to say the least of it, supple- 

 ments Dr. Beccari 's book. To the ethnologist the 

 chief value of the book lies in the identification of 

 animals, and especially of plants, employed by the 

 natives, as the author not only gives their uses, but 

 their native and scientific names. 



The general naturalist will find the book packed 

 with interesting information. Dr. Beccari is an 

 enthusiastic and keen witted field naturalist. The in- 

 tending traveller will pick up many valuable sugges- 

 tions, and the stav-at-home naturalist will gain an 

 extremely good idea of the conditions of life in the 



opinion that at least two species of orang-utan exist 

 in Borneo. Dr. Beccari has come to the following 

 conclusions : — There is no well authenticated case of a . 

 female with lateral face-expansions, though there is- 

 some evidence that such do occur ; but there are yo jng 

 orangs with milk dentition which have them well de- 

 veloped, and adult male individuals are found with 

 the expansions rudimentary. Not associated with the 

 above character is the frequent absence of the terminal 

 phalange of the hallux with the total or partial sup- 

 pression of the nail. Evidently there is great vari- 

 ability in the orang, but Dr. Beccari holds that there is- 

 only one species of Simia satyriis with two main varie- 

 ties, " tjaping " with lateral adipose cheek-expansions- 

 and highly developed cranial crests, and " kassa " 

 with no lateral cheek-expansions and its skull devoid 

 of strongly pronounced crests. Nevertheless, he 

 suggests " that in a remote past the Mayas tjaping 



jungk-s of Borneo. The author not only describes 

 what he saw, but he seeks to trace the interdependence 

 of organisms upon one another and their relations to 

 the environment. As Dr. Beccari is a professional 

 botanist, the botany of a tropical forest is dealt with 

 more fully and with greater knowledge than is usual 

 in similar books, and those botanists w-ho are interested 

 in ecology will find much that will be of service to 

 them. 



The most important zoological observations are 

 those on the orang-utan. The Dyaks recognise 

 several varieties of orang, the two more important 

 being the " Mayas kassa " and the " Mayas tjaping," 

 with a laminar lateral expansion of naked skin in front 

 of each ear. (In a foot-note we read that tjaping, in 

 Malay, is the term applied to a small, nearly triangular 

 piece of silver which is hung in front of baby girls 

 as a fig-leaf.) Wallace and others have expressed the 



NO. 1835, VOL. 71] 



and the Mayas kassa were two quite distinct species, 

 perhaps having their origin in separate regions, and 

 onlv later coming into contact on the same area . . . 

 at present it seems hardly likely that the two races 

 should remain distinct." Dr. Beccari brought home 

 a large number of skins, skeletons, and heads of these 

 animals, and he confesses to have killed and wounded 

 others which he could not take away. He adds 

 practically nothing to our knowledge of their habits. 



Dr. Beccari does not hesitate to throw out a number 

 of hypotheses, many of which will by no means be 

 implicitlv accepted by biologists; for example, he 

 suggests (p. 32) that the prominent nose with narrow 

 nostrils directed downwards of the Semitic people is 

 associated with living in an open country, " whilst 

 Negroes and Malays, for the most part dwellers in the 

 forest, have snub noses with wide nostrils turned up- 

 wards, such as characterise most monkeys." Again, 



