f Von
Wurmb's specimens reached Holland, they would hardly have been unknown
at this time to Camper, who, however, goes on to say--"It appears that
since this, some more of these monsters have been captured, for an
entire skeleton, very badly set up, which had been sent to the Museum
of the Prince of Orange, and which I saw only on the 27th of June, 1784,
was more than four feet high. I examined this skeleton again on the
19th December, 1785, after it had been excellently put to rights by the
ingenious Onymus."

It appears evident, then, that this skeleton, which is doubtless that
which has always gone by the name of Wurmb's Pongo, is not that of the
animal described by him, though unquestionably similar in all essential
points.

Camper proceeds to note some of the most important features of this
skeleton; promises to describe it in detail by-and-bye; and is evidently
in doubt as to the relation of this great 'Pongo' to his "petit Orang."

The promised further investigations were never carried out; and so it
happened that the Pongo of Von Wurmb took its place by the side of
the Chimpanzee, Gibbon, and Orang as a fourth and colossal species
of man-like Ape. And indeed nothing could look much less like the
Chimpanzees or the Orangs, then known, than the Pongo; for all the
specimens of Chimpanzee and Orang which had been observed were small of
stature, singularly human in aspect, gentle and docile; while Wurmb's
Pongo was a monster almost twice their size, of vast strength and
fierceness, and very brutal in expression; its great projecting muzzle,
armed with strong teeth, being further disfigured by the outgrowth of
the cheeks into fleshy lobes.

Eventually, in accordance with the usual marauding habits of the
Revolutionary armies, the 'Pongo' skeleton was carried away from Holland
into France, and notices of it, expressly intended to demonstrate its
entire distinctness from the Orang and its affinity with the baboons,
were given, in 1798, by Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Cuvier.

Even in Cuvier's 'Tableau Elementaire', and in the first edition of his
great work, the 'Regne Animal', the 'Pongo' is classed as a species of
Baboon. However, so early as 1818, it appears that Cuvier saw reason to
alter this opinion, and to adopt the view suggested several years before
by Blumenbach, [12] and after him by Tilesius, that the Bornean Pongo is
simply an adult Orang. In 1824, Rudolphi demonstrated, by the condition
of the dentition