This Enables It To Pass Obliquely
Through The Air From One Tree To Another.
It is sluggish in its
motions, at least by day, going up a tree by short runs of a
Few
feet, and then stopping a moment as if the action was difficult.
It rests during the day clinging to the trunks of trees, where
its olive or brown fur, mottled with irregular whitish spots and
blotches, resembles closely the colour of mottled bark, and no
doubt helps to protect it. Once, in a bright twilight, I saw one
of these animals run up a trunk in a rather open place, and then
glide obliquely through the air to another tree, on which it
alighted near its base, and immediately began to ascend. I paced
the distance from the one tree to the other, and found it to be
seventy yards; and the amount of descent I estimated at not more
than thirty-five or forty feet, or less than one in five. This I
think proves that the animal must have some power of guiding
itself through the air, otherwise in so long a distance it would
have little chance of alighting exactly upon the trunk. Like the
Cuscus of the Moluccas, the Galeopithecus feeds chiefly on
leaves, and possesses a very voluminous stomach and long
convoluted intestines. The brain is very small, and the animal
possesses such remarkable tenacity of life, that it is
exceedingly difficult to kill it by any ordinary means. The tail
is prehensile; and is probably made use of as an additional
support while feeding. It is said to have only a single young one
at a time, and my own observation confirms this statement, for I
once shot a female with a very small blind and naked little
creature clinging closely to its breast, which was quite bare and
much wrinkled, reminding me of the young of Marsupials, to which
it seemed to form a transition. On the back, and extending over
the limbs and membrane, the fur of these animals is short, but
exquisitely soft, resembling in its texture that of the
Chinchilla.
I returned to Palembang by water, and while staying a day at a
village while a boat was being made watertight, I had the good
fortune to obtain a male, female, and young bird of one of the
large hornbills. I had sent my hunters to shoot, and while I was
at breakfast they returned, bringing me a fine large male of the
Buceros bicornis, which one of them assured me he had shot while
feeding the female, which was shut up in a hole in a tree. I had
often read of this curious habit, and immediately returned to the
place, accompanied by several of the natives. After crossing a
stream and a bog, we found a large tree leaning over some water,
and on its lower side, at a height of about twenty feet, appeared
a small hole, and what looked like a quantity of mud, which I was
assured had been used in stopping up the large hole. After a
while we heard the harsh cry of a bird inside, and could see the
white extremity of its beak put out. I offered a rupee to anyone
who would go up and get the bird out, with the egg or young one;
but they all declared it was too difficult, and they were afraid
to try. I therefore very reluctantly came away. About an hour
afterwards, much to my surprise, a tremendous loud, hoarse
screaming was heard, and the bird was brought me, together with a
young one which had been found in the hole. This was a most
curious object, as large as a pigeon, but without a particle of
plumage on any part of it. It was exceedingly plump and soft, and
with a semi-transparent skin, so that it looked more like a bag
of jelly, with head and feet stuck on, than like a real bird.
The extraordinary habit of the male, in plastering up the female
with her egg, and feeding her during the whole time of
incubation, and until the young one is fledged, is common to
several of the large hornbills, and is one of those strange facts
in natural history which are "stranger than fiction."
CHAPTER IX.
NATURAL HISTORY OF THE INDO-MALAY ISLANDS.
IN the first chapter of this work I have stated generally the
reasons which lead us to conclude that the large islands in the
western portion of the Archipelago - Java, Sumatra, and Borneo - as
well as the Malay peninsula and the Philippine islands, have been
recently separated from the continent of Asia. I now propose to
give a sketch of the Natural History of these, which I term the
Indo-Malay islands, and to show how far it supports this view,
and how much information it is able to give us of the antiquity
and origin of the separate islands.
The flora of the Archipelago is at present so imperfectly known,
and I have myself paid so little attention to it, that I cannot
draw from it many facts of importance. The Malayan type of
vegetation is however a very important one; and Dr. Hooker
informs us, in his "Flora Indica," that it spreads over all the
moister and more equable parts of India, and that many plants
found in Ceylon, the Himalayas, the Nilghiri, and Khasia mountains
are identical with those of Java and the Malay peninsula. Among
the more characteristic forms of this flora are the rattans -
climbing palms of the genus Calamus, and a great variety of
tall, as well as stemless palms. Orchids, Aracae, Zingiberaceae
and ferns, are especially abundant, and the genus Grammatophyllum -
a gigantic epiphytal orchid, whose clusters of leaves and flower-stems
are ten or twelve feet long - is peculiar to it. Here, too, is the
domain of the wonderful pitcher plants (Nepenthaceae), which are only
represented elsewhere by solitary species in Ceylon, Madagascar, the
Seychelles, Celebes, and the Moluccas.
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