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Many names of animals are adapted from words in the ancient language of the natives in whose country the creatures were first discovered. The coyote and ocelot were called coyotl and ocelotl by the Mexicans long before Cortes landed on their shores. Zebra, gorilla, and chimpanzee are native African words, and orang-utan is Malay, meaning Man of the Woods.
Tiedemann first published an account of the brain of the young Orang, while Sandifort, Muller and Schlegel, described the muscles and the viscera of the adult, and gave the earliest detailed and trustworthy history of the habits of the great Indian Ape in a state of nature; and as important additions have been made by later observers, we are at this moment better acquainted with the adult of the Orang-Utan, than with that of any of the other greater man-like Apes.
Gray apes chatter in the tree-tops; strange tropic birds of gorgeous plumage flit from bough to bough, monstrous reptiles slip silently through the undergrowth; insects buzz in swarms above the putrid swamps; occasionally the jungle crashes beneath the tread of some heavy animal a rhinoceros, perhaps, or a wild bull, or an orang-utan.
In Borneo the Orang-Utan of the Malays goes by the name of "Mias" among the Dyaks, who distinguish several kinds as 'Mias Pappan', or 'Zimo', 'Mias Kassu', and 'Mias Rambi'. Whether these are distinct species, however, or whether they are mere races, and how far any of them are identical with the Sumatran Orang, as Mr.
She then ascended the tree, and, in full view of the ship as it sailed away, she lifted the child and tore it in twain. The orang-utan spends most of his time in the trees, seldom descending to the ground. That the one in this case is assumed to follow the daily habit of the Dayak is in accordance with the spirit of folk-lore.
Being fond of Verkimier, and knowing his desire to obtain a full-grown orang-utan, Gurulam went off early next morning to search for one.
On rounding a point of the river the travellers came suddenly upon an interesting group, in the midst of a most beautiful woodland scene. Under the trees on a flat spot by the river-bank were seated round a fire a man and a boy and a monkey. The monkey was a tame orang-utan, youthful but large.
In the second edition of the 'Regne Animal' , Cuvier infers, from the 'proportions of all the parts' and 'the arrangements of the foramina and sutures of the head, that the Pongo is the adult of the Orang-Utan, 'at least of a very closely allied species, and this conclusion was eventually placed beyond all doubt by Professor Owen's Memoir published in the 'Zoological Transactions' for 1835, and by Temminck in his 'Monographies de Mammalogie'. Temminck's memoir is remarkable for the completeness of the evidence which it affords as to the modification which the form of the Orang undergoes according to age and sex.
The animal tribe, then, is reduced to the following: Orang-utan, tiger cat, wild pig, deer, and snipe; the pretty "plandok" or mouse-deer, and honey-bears, being also occasionally met with.
The head of an orang-utan, by the way, is as highly prized in many of the Dyak tribes as that of a human being. Nor is this surprising, for the warrior who single-handed can kill one of the mighty anthropoids is deserving of the trophy. During my stay in Borneo I heard many theories advanced in explanation of head-hunting.
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