r 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,* and after him by Tilesius, that the Bornean Pongo
is simply an adult Orang. ([Footnote] *See Blumenbach, 'Abbildungen
Naturhistorichen Gegenstande', No. 12, 1810; and Tilesius,
'Naturhistoriche Fruchte der ersten Kaiserlich-Russischen
Erdumsegelung', p. 115, 1813.) In 1824, Rudolphi demonstrated, by the
condition of the dentition, more fully and completely than had been done
by his predecessors, that the Orangs described up to that time were all
young animals, and that the skull and teeth of the adult would probably
be such as those seen in the Pongo of Wurmb. In the second edition of
the 'Regne Animal' (1829), Cuvier infers, from the 'proportions of all
the parts' and 'the arrangements of the foramina and sutures of the
head,' that the Pongo is the adult of the Orang-Utan, 'at least of a
very closely allied species,' and this conclusion was eventually placed
beyond all doubt by Professor Owen's Memoir published in the 'Zoological
Transactions' for 1835, and by Temminck in his 'Monographies de
Mammalogie'. Temminck's memoir is remarkable for the completeness of the
evidence which it affords as to the modification which the form of