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. 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 as to 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 1/2 broad across the face, measured
as soon as the animal was killed, I can quite understand that when the head