66 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
thick and tough, and closely covered with strong conical spines. It probably bites off a few of these 
first, and then, making a small hole, tears open the fruit with its powerful fingers. The Mias rarely 
descends to the ground, except when, pressed by hunger, it seeks for succulent shoots by the river side ; 
or, in very dry weather, has to search after water, of which it generally finds sufficient in the hollows 
of leaves. Once only I saw two half-grown Orangs on the ground, in a dry hollow at the foot of the 
Simunjou Hill. They were playing together, standing erect, and grasping each other by the arms. It 
may be safely stated, however, that the Orang never walks erect, unless when using its hands to 
support itself by branches overhead, or when attacked. Representations of its walking with a stick 
are entirely imaginary. The Dyaks all declare that the Mias is never attacked by any animal in the 
forest, with two rare exceptions ; and the accounts I received of these are so curious, that I give them 
nearly in the words of my informants, old Dyak chiefs, who had lived all their lives in the places 
where the animal is most abundant. The first of whom I inquired said : — ‘ No animal is strong 
enough to hurt the Mias, and the only creature he ever fights with is the Crocodile. When there is 
no fruit in the jungle, he goes to seek food on the banks of the river, where there are plenty of young 
shoots that he likes, and fruits that grow close to the water. Then the Crocodile sometimes tries to 
seize him, but the Mias gets upon him, and beats him with his hands and feet, and tears him, and kills 
111111.’ He added that he had once seen such a fight, and that lie believes that the Mias is always the 
victor. My next informant was the Orang Kaya, or chief of the Balow Dyaks, on the Simunjou 
River. He said : 4 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 jaws, 
and ripping up its throat. If a Python attacks a Mias, he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it r 
and soon kills it. The Mias is very strong ; there is no animal 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 in- 
habited by the higher Mammalia ; but in the Mid-Tertiary Period, and just before the formation of 
the Himalayan Mountains, Orangs lived on the continent of India, and their remains have been 
found fossilised. With what interest must every naturalist look forward to the time when the caves 
and tertiary deposits of the tropics may be thoroughly examined, and the past history and earliest 
appearance of the great man-like Apes be at length made known ! 
The Orang-utans appear, from what has been written by all competent observers, to be of two- 
kinds, the one larger, and the other smaller in stature • the first is called Simla satyrus , and the 
other Simia morio. Simia is translated in old Latin dictionaries as an Ape, or J ackanapes, and the term 
was used to designate the tribe or genus which should include all the species or kinds of man-shaped 
Apes. But after a while there was thought to be sufficient reasons for separating the Troglodytes from 
the genus Simia, and therefore this last-named one, instead of comprising the Gorilla, the Nschiego, the 
Koolo, the Soko, and the Chimpanzee, has but the Orang-utan. 
Why this separation should have taken place is of course a very natural question, and the 
answer is that there are sufficient differences in the construction of the Orangs and the Chimpanzees 
and the others to waiTant it. There is a greater structural difference between the Orang and the 
Chimpanzee than between this last and any of its congeners, that is to say, species included in the 
genus Troglodytes. 
Moreover, on examining several skulls and skeletons of all these kinds, it seems as if, whilst the 
African Troglodytes may have descended from a common ancestor, probably a Baboon, the Orang- 
utan could not have come from the same stock. 
There are some important distinctions in the anatomy of the Orang, some of which are evidently 
produced by adaptation to a particular habit or mode of life, and others in which the results of 
cause and effect cannot be traced. 
In making its way through the forest, and in climbing so constantly, that any position on the ground 
is rare the great length of the tore limbs is of immense use to them. They nearly touch the ground, 
so long are they, when the creature is erect, and this peculiarity separates them from the Chimpanzees. 
In climbing, the blade-bone is of great importance ; and in the Orang it is broader, and more like that of 
man than in the Chimpanzee and Gorilla, and its spine is inclined upwards ; and one of the processes 
of the blade-bone which has to do with the muscles which pass from the shoulder to the aim, and 
