5330 Notices of New Books. 



moves as quickly as a man can run along the ground beneath. When 

 pursued or attacked, his object is to get to the loftiest tree near; he 

 then climbs rapidly to the higher branches, breaking off quantities of 

 the smaller boughs, apparently for the purpose of frightening his pur- 

 suers. Temminck denies that the orang breaks the branches to throw 

 down when pursued; but I have myself several times observed it. 

 It is true he does not throw them at a person, but casts them down 

 vertically, for it is evident that a bough cannot be thrown to any 

 distance from the top of a lofty tree. In one case, a female mias, on 

 a durian tree, kept up for at least ten minutes a continuous shower of 

 branches and of the heavy-spined fruits, as large as 32-pounders, 

 which most effectually kept us clear of the tree she was on. She 

 could be seen breaking them off and throwing them down with every 

 appearance of rage, uttering at intervals a loud pumping grunt, and 

 evidently meaning mischief. 



" When a mias is once up a lofty tree, there is no danger of his get- 

 ting away, as he will not descend to the lower branches, which he must 

 do to pass to another tree. As soon as he feels himself badly wounded, 

 he makes a nest, which, if he completes, is so secure that he can never 

 fall from it. I lost two miases that way, both dying on their nest, 

 when I could not get any one to climb up or cut down the tree till 

 next day, when putrefaction had commenced. They choose a hori- 

 zontal forked branch, and breaking off all the branches in its neigh- 

 bourhood, lay them across one another until a complete leafy bed is 

 made, which quite hides them from below, and from which they will 

 not move afterwards. Their tenacity of life is very great; from six 

 to a dozen bullets in the body being required to kill them or make 

 them fall. 



" Every night the mias sleeps on a nest similar to that above 

 described, but smaller, and generally placed on a small tree, not more 

 than fifty or sixty feet from the ground. The same animal appears 

 seldom to use the same nest more than once or twice, and they are 

 accordingly very abundant in places frequented by the mias. They 

 feed all through the middle of the day, but seldom return to the same 

 tree two days running. They seem not much alarmed at man, often 

 staring down upon me for several minutes, and then moving away 

 slowly to a short distance. After seeing one, I have often had to go 

 a mile or more to fetch my gun, and, in almost every case, have found 

 it on my return within a hundred yards of the place. I have never 

 seen two adult animals together, but both males and females are some- 

 times accompanied by half-grown young ones, or two or three of the 



