or Fern
leaves, like those of which his bed is made, and he is especially
careful to wrap up his head in them. It is this habit of covering
himself up which has probably led to the fable that the Orang builds
huts in the trees.

Although the Orang resides mostly amid the boughs of great trees, during
the daytime, he is very rarely seen squatting on a thick branch,
as other apes, and particularly the Gibbons, do. The Orang, on the
contrary, confines himself to the slender leafy branches, so that he
is seen right at the top of the trees, a mode of life which is closely
related to the constitution of his hinder limbs, and especially to
that of his seat. For this is provided with no callosities, such as are
possessed by many of the lower apes, and even by the Gibbons; and those
bones of the pelvis, which are termed the ischia, and which form the
solid framework of the surface on which the body rests in the sitting
posture, are not expanded like those of the apes which possess
callosities, but are more like those of man.

An Orang climbs so slowly and cautiously,* as, in this act, to resemble
a man more than an ape, taking great care of his feet, so that injury of
them seems to affect him far more than it does other apes. ([Footnote]
* "They are the slowest and least active of all the monkey tribe, and
their motions are surprisingly awkward and uncouth."--Sir James Brooke,
in the 'Proceedings of the Zoological Society', 1841.) Unlike the
Gibbons, whose forearms do the greater part of the work, as they swing
from branch to branch, the Orang never makes even the smallest jump. In
climbing, he moves alternately one hand and one foot, or, after having
laid fast hold with the hands, he draws up both feet together. In
passing from one tree to another, he always seeks out a place where
the twigs of both come close together, or interlace. Even when closely
pursued, his circumspection is amazing: he shakes the branches to see
if they will bear him, and then bending an overhanging bough down by
throwing his weight gradually along it, he makes a bridge from the tree
he wishes to quit to the next.* ([Footnote] *Mr. Wallace's account of
the progression of the Orang almost exactly corresponds with this.)

On the ground the Orang always goes laboriously and shakily, on all
fours. At starting he will run faster than a man, though he may soon be
overtaken. The very long arms which, when he runs, are but little bent,
raise the body of the