Unfortunately, It Never Seems
To Have A Reached Holland, For Nothing Has Since Been Heard Of
Any Such Animal.
Mr. St. John, in his "Life in the Forests of the
Far East," vol.
Ii. p. 237, tells us of an Orang shot by a friend
of his, which was 5 feet 2 inches from the heel to the top of the
head, the arm 17 inches in girth, and the wrist 12 inches! The
head alone was brought to Sarawak, and Mr. St. John tells us that
he assisted to measure this, and that it was 15 inches broad by
14 long. Unfortunately, even this skull appears not to have been
preserved, for no specimen corresponding to these dimensions has
yet reached England.
In a letter from Sir James Brooke, dated October 1857 in which he
acknowledges the receipt of my Papers on the Orang, published in
the "Annals and Magazine of Natural History," he sends me the
measurements of a specimen killed by his nephew, which I will
give exactly as I received it: "September 3rd, 1867, killed
female Orangutan. 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." Now, in these
dimensions, there is palpably one error; for in every Orang yet
measured by any naturalist, an expanse of arms of 6 feet 1 inch
corresponds to a height of about 3 feet 6 inches, while the
largest specimens of 4 feet to 4 feet 2 inches high, always have
the extended arms 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 so long that an animal standing nearly erect can rest its
fingers on the ground.
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