PLATE LVII. 



Having introduced the name of Pongo to our readers, it may 

 riot be superfluous to observe, that the true Pongo was supposed to 

 be still another animal, very different from that of BufTon. It is 

 described by Wurmbs, and subsequently by Tiedemann, under the 

 name of Pongo Wurmbsii, and is described as being of the stature 

 of a man ; with some writers it constitutes a family or genus distinct 

 frw3m the Orang-Outangs. Mons. Cuvier, in his Kegne Animal, 

 adopts the genus Pongo, which he places after the Mandrills, ob- 

 serving that the only species at present known is that described by 

 Wurmbs. Professor Illiger of Berlin is of a different opinion ; in 

 his Prodromus the Pongo does not constitute a different genus, it is 

 allied to Simia Inuus, as a species of his genus Cynocephalus ; and 

 lastly, it should be observed, that in a paper read some time ago in 

 the Academy of Sciences at Paris, it appears that Mons. Cuvier has 

 changed his former conclusions, for he now considers the Pongo of 

 Wurmbs to be no other than the adult of the Kufous Orang-Outang, 

 and concludes that those smaller animals of the Rufous kind which 

 have been hitherto brought alive to Europe, are only the young of 

 that species. This labt opinion is confirmed in our mind by a critical 

 examination of the skeleton of the Pongo Wurmbsii in the Museum 

 of Anatomy in Paris, and a due comparison of that skeleton with 

 those of the rufous and black Orang-Outang preserved in the same 

 museum, all which, by the favour of Baron Cuvier, were taken 

 down from their cases and placed together for the purpose of our in- 

 spection. We found that the skeleton of the Pongo differs in no res- 

 pect except in magnitude from that of the rufous Orang-Outang; the 

 length of the arms, one of the most essential characters of the species 

 in our opinion, is precisely the same : in both the hand would reach 

 so low down the tibia that the end of the fingers would without 



