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 Him." He Added That He Had Once Seen Such A Fight, And That
He Believes That The Mias Is Always The Victor.
My next informant was the Orang Kaya, or chief of the Balow
Dyaks, on the Simunjon River.
He 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 jaws, and ripping up its throat. If a python
attacks a Mias, he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it,
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 Orangutan, should be confined
to so limited a district - to two islands, and those almost the
last inhabited by the higher Mammalia; for, east of Borneo and
Java, the Quadrumania, Ruminants, Carnivora, and many other
groups of Mammalla diminish rapidly, and soon entirely disappear.
When we consider, further, that almost all other animals have in
earlier ages been represented by allied yet distinct forms -
that, in the latter part of the tertiary period, Europe was
inhabited by bears, deer, wolves, and cats; Australia by
kangaroos and other marsupials; South America by gigantic sloths
and ant-eaters; all different from any now existing, though
intimately allied to them - we have every reason to believe that
the Orangutan, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla have also had
their forerunners. 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 made known at
length.
I will now say a few words as to the supposed existence of a
Bornean Orang as large as the Gorilla. I have myself examined the
bodies of seventeen freshly-killed Orangs, all of which were
carefully measured; and of seven of them, I preserved the
skeleton. I also obtained two skeletons killed by other persons.
Of this extensive series, sixteen were fully adult, nine being
males, and seven females. The adult males of the large Orangs
only varied from 4 feet 1 inch to 4 feet 2 inches in height,
measured fairly to the heel, so as to give the height of the
animal if it stood perfectly erect; the extent of the
outstretched arms, from 7 feet 2 inches to 7 feet 8 inches; and
the width of the face, from 10 inches to 13 1/2 inches. The
dimensions given by other naturalists closely agree with mine.
The largest Orang measured by Temminck was 4 feet high. Of
twenty-five specimens collected by Schlegel and Muller, the
largest old male was 4 feet 1 inch; and the largest skeleton in
the Calcutta Museum was, according to Mr. Blyth, 4 feet 1 1/2
inch.
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