go
on growing, though slowly, and that they live to forty or fifty years.
The Dyaks tell of old Orangs which have not only lost all their
teeth, but which find it so troublesome to climb that they maintain
themselves on windfalls and juicy herbage.

The Orang is sluggish, exhibiting none of that marvellous activity
characteristic of the Gibbons. Hunger alone seems to stir him to
exertion, and when it is stilled he relapses into repose. When the
animal sits, it curves its back and bows its head, so as to look
straight down on the ground; sometimes it holds on with its hands by a
higher branch, sometimes lets them hang phlegmatically down by its
side; and in these positions the Orang will remain for hours together,
in the same spot, almost without stirring, and only now and then
giving utterance to its deep, growling voice. By day he usually climbs
from one tree-top to another, and only at night descends to the
ground: and if then threatened with danger he seeks refuge among the
underwood. When not hunted, he remains a long time in the same
locality, and sometimes stops for many days on the same tree, a firm
place among its branches serving him for a bed. It is rare for the
Orang to pass the night in the summit of a large tree, probably
because it is too windy and cold there for him; but as soon as night
draws on he descends from the height and seeks out a fit bed in the
lower and darker part, or in the leafy top of a small tree, among
which he prefers Nibong palms, Pandani, or one of those parasitic
orchids which gave the primeval forests of Borneo so characteristic
and striking an appearance. But whenever he determines to sleep, there
he prepares himself a sort of nest; little boughs and leaves are drawn
together round the selected spot, and bent crosswise over one
another; while to make the bed soft, great leaves of ferns, of
orchids, of _Pandanus fascicularis_, _Nipa fruticans_, etc., are
laid over them. Those which Mueller saw, many of them being very fresh,
were situated at a height of ten to twenty-five feet above the ground,
and had a circumference, on the average, of two or three feet. Some
were packed many inches thick with _pandanus_ leaves; others were
remarkable only for the cracked twigs, which, united in a common
centre, formed a regular platform. "The rude _hut_," says Sir James
Brooke, "which they are stated to build in the trees, would be more
properly called a seat or nest, for it has no roof or cover