s with is the crocodile. When there is no fruit in the jungle,
he goes to seek food on the banks of the river where there are plenty
of young shoots that he likes, and fruits that grow close to the water.
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