MAMMALOGY. 



Orang-Outangs ; their preserved remains are extant only in a few- 

 museums of the first importance, and the naturahst who has been so 

 fortunate as to see any animal of this kind alive, may indeed felicitate 

 himself upon the occurrence. It has been said with some emphasis of 

 the celebrated Maupertuis, that he would have preferred an hour's 

 contemplation of the Orang-Outang to the conversation of the most 

 learned of mankind. The expression is worthy of the philosopher ! 

 though it cannot be understood thatMaupertuis would have abandoned, 

 except for awhile to gratify his contemplations, the society of the 

 learned, to hold converse by signs and gestures with these sagacious 

 beings of the Simia race ; and the instances^are so few in which such 

 an opportunity has been afforded the European philosopher to gratify 

 reflection and enquiry that we are not to be surprised at the zealous 

 manner in which such a gratification would be acknowledged. 



In the time of George Edwards, the great English ornithologist 

 of his day, there was a living animal of this species in England, the 

 individual example from which his drawings were taken, and which, 

 with all its faults, furnished Linnjeus, as already shown, with the 

 information upon which his description of the species rests. The 

 whole collection of the original drawings of Edwards were deposited, 

 after his death, in the British Museum, and it is presumed also from 

 the observations of Professor Camper of the Hague upon the subject 

 of the Orang-Outang, published some years after, that the remains of 

 the animal were also placed in the Museum. Camper having re- 

 quested M. Rooistra, a medical friend at that time in England, and 

 Dr. Maty, then attached to the establishment of the Museum, to 

 examine whether the great toes of the feet were furnished with a naiJ , 

 as Edwards had dehncatcd, and received for answer that they were 



