368 
ORANG-OUTANG. 
had been called Orang-Outang, led the great Buffon* to confound the Pongo 
of Africa, ( Simla Troglodytes of Linnaeus,) described by Tulpius, Tyson, Buf- 
fon, and others, with the Borneo Orang-Outang. A similar error might induce 
naturalists of the present day to confound the true Borneo species with others 
of its tribe. For these reasons I think it safer to conclude, that the descriptions 
of F. Cuvier and Tilesius are deficient in satisfactory evidence of their animals 
being natives of Borneo. But it may be said, if all the characters of these 
animals accord with those of the Borneo species, excepting in the presence 
of nails on the great toes, no other evidence of their identity is required. In 
examining the description of F. Cuvier, with a view to this question, I find 
an important difference between the relative length of the arms and height of 
his animal, and the same dimensions of the one that I have described. The 
greatest height of his animal, measured in the ordinary standing pos- 
ture, was thirty inches, and the length of his arm eighteen. “Debout, dans 
sa position naturelle, sa taille n’excedoit pas 26 a 30 pouces ; la longueur de 
ses bras depths l’aisselle jusqu’au bout des doigts etoit de hix-huit tpouces.” 
The greatest height of the animal that I have described, whether in his stand- 
ing posture or when stretched out on a table, is thirty-one inches and a half ; 
and his arm from the axilla to the end of the finger measures twenty-five inches. 
In F. Cuvier’s animal, therefore, the length of the arm compared with the 
height of the body was as 18 to 30 ; in mine, it is 2.5 to 31-5 ; so that in the 
smaller animal, the height of the body is greater in proportion to that of the 
arm than in the larger. When the animal which I have described is stretched 
at full length, the ends of his fingers reach below the external ancle. 
In a drawing of the animal described by F. Cuvier, from the stuffed speci- 
men preserved at Paris, made at my request under the inspection of Dr. 
Leach, the appearance of the arms corresponds with the measurement given 
in the Annales du Museum ; the ends of the fingers do not reach to the ex- 
ternal ancle. This difference in the proportions of two animals, in which 
it might be expected that distinction of species would be as much marked 
by the proportion of parts, as by their form, seems almost sufficient, especially 
in conjunction with the remarkable difference of structure in their toes, to 
separate them distinctly from each other. As Tilesius has given no dimen- 
* Histoire Naturelle, tom. xiii. This error is corrected in his supplement, tom. ix. 
f Annales de Museum, tom, xvi. p. 46. 
