lly would cast a
furtive glance towards the place where I sat. I pretended to write; he,
seeing me busily occupied, took the soap, and moved away with it in his
paw. When he had walked half the length of the cabin, I spoke quietly,
without frightening him. The instant he found I saw him, he walked back
again, and deposited the soap nearly in the same place from whence he
had taken it. There was certainly something more than instinct in that
action: he evidently betrayed a consciousness of having done wrong both
by his first and last actions--and what is reason if that is not an
exercise of it?"

The most elaborate account of the natural history of the ORANG-UTAN
extant, is that given in the "Verhandelingen over de Natuurlijke
Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche overzeesche Bezittingen (1839-45)," by
Dr. Salomon Muller and Dr. Schlegel, and I shall base what I have to
say, upon this subject almost entirely on their statements, adding, here
and there, particulars of interest from the writings of Brooke, Wallace,
and others.

The Orang-Utan would rarely seem to exceed four feet in height, but
the body is very bulky, measuring two-thirds of the height in
circumference.* ([Footnote] *The largest Orang-Utan, cited by Temminck,
measured, when standing upright, 4 ft.; but he mentions having just
received news of the capture of an Orang 5 ft. 3 in. high. Schlegel
and Muller say that their largest old male measured, upright, 1.25
Netherlands "el"; and from the crown to the end of the toes, 1.5 el; the
circumference of the body being about 1 el. The largest old female
was 1.09 el high, when standing. The adult skeleton in the College of
Surgeons' Museum, if set upright, would stand 3 ft. 6-8 in. from crown
to sole. Dr. Humphry gives 3 ft. 8 in. as the mean height of two Orangs.
Of seventeen Orangs examined by Mr. Wallace, the largest was 4 ft. 2
in. high, from the heel to the crown of the head. Mr. Spencer St. John,
however, in his 'Life in the Forests of the Far East', tells us of an
Orang of "5 ft. 2 in., measuring fairly from the head to the heel," 15
in. across the face, and 12 in. round the wrist. It does not appear,
however, that Mr. St. John measured this Orang himself.)

The Orang-Utan is found only in Sumatra and Borneo, and is common in
neither of these islands--in both of which it occurs always in low, flat
plains, never in the mountains. It loves the densest and most sombre of
the forests, which extend from the sea-shore