cnAP. IT.] mjs Ah'D mocomiK 



61 



Mias, and the only creature iie ever fights with is the 

 crocodile. When there is no fruit in the jnngle, he goes 

 to seek food on the banks of the river, where there are 

 pUinty of young shoots thitt he likes, ami fruits that 

 grow close to the water. Then the crocodile sometimes 

 tries to scire him, but the Mias gets upon liim, and 

 heats hiru with his hands and feet, and tears him and 

 kills him." lie added that he had once seen such a 

 tiglit, and that he believes that the Mias is always the 

 victor. 



My next informant was the Oranf? Kaya, or cliief of the 

 llalow Dvfik^?, on the Simijnjon Piivtr. lie said : " The 

 Mias has no enemies ; no animals dare attack it but the 

 crocodile and the python. He always kills the crocodile 

 by main strength, standing upon it, pulling open its jawa^ 

 and ripping up its throat. If a python attacks a Mias, 

 he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it, and soon 

 kill.s it. Tlie Mias is very strong ; there is no aniniid in 

 the jungle so strong as he." 



It is very remarkable that an animal so large, so 

 peculiar, and of such a high type of form as the Orang- 

 utan, should be confined to so limited a district — to two 

 islands, and those almost the last iidiabited by the 

 higher Mammalia ; for, eastward of Borneo and Java, 

 iliu Quadramania, Euminants, Carnivora, and many other 

 groups of Mammalia, diminish rapidly, and soon entirely 

 disappear. AVhen we consider, further, that almost all 

 other animals have in earlier ages been represented by 

 allied yet distinct forms— that, in the latter pai-t of the 

 ti-rtiary period, Europe was inliabited by bears, deer, 

 wolves, and cats ; Australia by kangaroos and other mar- 

 supials ; South America by gigantic sloths and ant-entt^rs ; 

 all different from any now existing, thou;;h intimately 

 nllied to them — we have every reason to believe that the 

 i)mng-utan, the Chimpanzee, and the GoriUa have also 

 hail their forerunnei-s. With what interest must every 

 naturalist look forward to the time when the caves 

 and tertiary deposits of the tropics mny be thomnghly 

 examined, and the past history and earliest appearance 

 of the gi'eat man-like apca be at length made known, 



I will now say a few words as to the supposed existence 



