ig NATURAL HISTORY IN ANECDOTE.

approaching which he stretches out his long arms, and
seizing the opposing boughs, grasps them together with
both hands, seems to try their strength, and then deliber-
ately swings himself across to the next branch on which he
walks along as before. He never jumps or springs, or even
appears to hurry himself, and yet manages to get along
almost as quickly as a person can run through the forest
beneath.”
ThoeStrength “The Dyaks,” says Mr. Wallace, “all declare
ofthe that the mias is never attacked by any animal in
Orang-utan. the forest, with two rare exceptions; and the
accounts received of these are so curious that I give them
nearly in the words of my informants, old Dyak Chiefs, who
had lived all their lives in the places where the animal is most
abundant. The first of whom I enquired said, ‘No animal is
strong enough to hurt the mias, and the only creature he ever
fights with is the crocodile. When there is no fruit in the
jungle he goes to seek food on the banks of the river where
there are plenty of young shoots that he likes, and fruits that
grow close to the water. Then the crocodile sometimes tries
to seize him, but the mias gets upon him and beats him with
his hands and feet, and tears and kills him.’ He added that he
had once seen such a fight and that he believed that the mias
is always the victor. My next informant was Orang Kayo
or chief of the Balow Dyaks on the Simunjou River. He
said the mias has no enemies, no animals dare attack it
but the crocodile and the python. He always kills the
crocodile by main strength, standing upon it, and pulling open
its. jaws and ripping up its throat. If a python attacks a
mias he seizes it with his hands and then bites it, and
soon kills it. The mias is very strong; there is no animal
in the jungle so strong as he.”
The Docility Buffon thus describes an orang-utan that he
ofthe saw: “His aspect was melancholy, his de-
Orang-utan. nortment grave, his movements regular, and