2 A HAND-BOOK .OF THE MANAGEMENT OF ANIMALS 



to be equally careful to keep out the cold and draughts during the long 

 winter nights. A thick bedding of straw is, of course, indispensable. 



The building should be well raised from the ground. It ought to be 

 divided into two parts — an inner sleeping-room, where the animal can also 

 retire in case of bad weather, or whenever it likes, and an outer cage. 



A brick-built room, 14 feet long, 12 feet broad and 7 feet 

 in height, with sufficient apertures in the wall to allow of ventilation, 

 and a sky-light, will be found to answer admirably as a sleeping -room 

 for a couple of orangs. The outer cage should be of the same 

 dimensions, and closed in on three sides and the top with one inch 

 wrought-iron bars. The floor of the building should be at least 3 feet 

 above the ground level. 



As it is impossible, in Lower Bengal, to secure perfect freedom 

 from damp in any one-storied room, it is advisable to place in the 

 sleeping apartment a wooden platform, covering the length and breadth 

 of the room, some eighteen inches above the floor. 



An orang-outang's dwelling, like a human habitation, requires 

 suitable furniture to make it complete. Perches, swings, trunks of 

 trees, horizontal bars, have been found to be the best substitutes for 

 this creature's natural surroundings. Wooden balls afford it perpetual 

 amusement, and a common looking-glass of ordinary dimensions, firmly 

 fixed to the wall, is an object of the greatest curiosity and pleasure to 

 this wild man of the woods. 



Food. — An adolescent, or a full-grown, orang maintains excellent 

 health when fed upon a mixed diet consisting of three or four plantains, a 

 quarter of a seer of soaked gram, a quarter of a pound loaf of bread, one 

 egg (unboiled), and such fruits or vegetables as may be available accord- 

 ing to the season, repeated twice daily. The cost of such a diet for a 

 full-grown orang will be about Rs. 5 per month. But it is as distasteful 

 to an orang as it would be to a human being to live upon the same 

 kind of food without change. The diet should, therefore, be varied 

 from time to time, and different articles substituted according to the 

 taste, appetite, and state of health of the animal, as ascertained by 

 observation. Three different courses of diet are given in the following 

 scheme, which will be found useful as a guide under ordinary circum- 



(1) Plantains, rice (boiled), biscuits, vegetables. 



(2) Gram (soaked), milk, bread, fruits. 



(3) Plaintains, egg (raw), sugarcane, &c, fruit or sweet potato. 

 The fruits include papya, guava, mango, tepari (Physalis- 



peruvi'ina), rose-apple, orange, bael, &c.,, and pumpkins, cucumber, 

 cabbage, raddish, peas, beans, sweet potato, brinjal, carrot, &c, may 

 be given as vegetables. 



. Besides the articles enumerated above, there are many other things 

 which an orang will gladly ta*ke as food, such as bael fruit tablets, the 

 leaves of screw pines, husks of the green cocoanut, and the succulent pith 

 of a date-palm. No two orangs, however, have exhibited identically 

 the same taste, so that one may refuse to taste what another has 

 consumed with avidity. 



Breeding.— Orangs have never bred in this or (so far as known 

 to the writer) in any other garden. 



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