The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

48 THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. [chap.have measured Orangs of a much larger size. Temminck, in hisMonograph of the Orang, says, that he has just received news ofthe capture of a siDecimen 5 feet 3 inches high. Unfortunately,it never seems to have reached Holland, for nothing has sincebeen heard of any such animal. Mr. St. John, in his Life in theForests of the Far Fast, vol. ii. p. 237, tells us of an Orang shotby a friend of his, which was 5 feet 2 inches from the heel to thetop of the head, the arm 17 inches in girth, and the wrist 12inches ! The head alone was brought to Sarawak, and Mr. St.John tells us that he assisted to measure this, and that it was 15inches broad by 14 long. Unfortunately, even this skull appearsnot to have been preserved, for no specimen corresponding tothese dimensions has yet reached England.In a letter from Sir James Brooke, dated October, 1857, inwhich he acknowledges the receipt of my Papers on the Orang,published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural Histoj-ij, he sendsme the measurements of a specimen killed by his nephew, whichI will give exactly as I received it ": September 3rd, 1867, killedfemale Orang-utan. Height, from head to heel, 4 feet 6 inches.Stretch from fingers to fingers across body, 6 feet 1 inch.Breadth of face, including callosities, 11 inches." Xow, in thesedimensions, there is palpably one error ; for in every Orang yetmeasured by any naturalist, an expanse of arms of 6 feet 1 inchcorresponds to a height of about 3 feet 6 inches, while the largestspecimens of 4 feet to 4 feet 2 inches high, always have the extendedarms as much as 7 feet 3 inches to 7 feet 8 inches. It is,in fact, one of the characters of the genus to have the arms solong that an animal standing nearly erect can rest its fingers onthe ground. A height of 4 feet 6 inches would therefore requirea stretch of arms of at least 8 feet ! If it were only 6 feet tothat height, as given in the dimensions quoted, the animal wouldnot be an Orang at all, but a new genus of apes, differingmaterially in habits and mode of progression. But ]\Ir. Jolmson,who shot tliis animal, and who knows Orangs well, evidentlyconsidered it to be one ; and we have therefore to judge whetherit is more probable that he made a mistake of tico feet in thestretch of the arms, or of one foot in the height. The latter erroris certainly the easiest to make, and it wnll bring his animal intoagreement, as to proportions and size, with all those which existin Europe. How easy it is to be deceived in the height of theseanimals is well shown in the case of the Sumatran Orang, theskin of which was described by Dr. Clarke Abel. The captainand crew who killed this animal declared, that when alive heexceeded the tallest man, and looked so gigantic that theythought he was 7 feet high ;but that, when he was killed andNowlay upon the ground, they found he was only about 6 feet.it will hardly be credited that the skin of this identical animalexists in the Calcutta ]\Iuseum, and ^Slr. Blyth, the late curator,states " that it is by no means one of the largest size ; " whichmeans that it is about 4 feet high !