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 arrived at Sarawak from the
Batang-Lupar, after two or three days' voyage, it was so swollen by
decomposition as to measure an inch more than when it was fresh. On the
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