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 i t : “ September 3d, 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. A height of 4 feet 6 inches would
therefore require a stretch of arms of at least 8 feet! If it
were only 6 feet to that height, as given in the dimensions
quoted, the animal would not be- an Orang at all, but
a new genus of apes, differing materially in habits and
mode of progression. But Mr. Johnson, who shot this
animal, and who knows Orangs well, evidently considered
it to be one; and we have therefore to judge whether it
is more probable that he made a mistake of two feet
in the stretch of the arms, or of one foot in the height.
The latter error is certainly the easiest to make, and it
will bring his animal into agreement, as to proportions
and size, with all those which exist in Europe. How easy
it is to be deceived in the height of these animals is well
shown in the case of the Sumatran Orang, the skin of
which was described by Dr. Clarke Abel. The captain
and crew who killed this animal declared, that when
alive he exceeded the tallest man, and looked so gigantic
that they thought he was 7 feet high; but that, when he
was killed and lay upon the ground, they found he was
only about 6 feet. Now it will hardly be credited that
the skin of this identical animal exists in the Calcutta
Museum, and Mr. Blyth, the late curator, states “ that
it is by no means one of the largest size; ” which means
that it is about 4 feet high!
Having these undoubted examples of error in the
dimensions of Orangs, it is not too much to conclude that
Mr. St. John’s friend made a similar error of measurement,
or rather, perhaps, of memory ; for we are not told that
the dimensions were noted down at the time they were
made. The only figures given by Mr. St. John on his
own authority are that “ the head was 15 inches broad
by 14 inches long.” As my largest male was 13£
H 2