28 MAMMALS

ward, so that he walks on the outside of his feet,
much as a boy does who treads his boots down. His
forehead is a high one, by no means so retreating as
in the gorillas and chimpanzees, and he has no ridges
to speak of over his eyes. His canine tecth are very
large, and, although he has twelve ribs like man, he
has only sixteen joints in his backbone. A. fossil
orang has been found in Northern India, and a close
ally, the Dryopithecus (which simply means ‘monkey
of the woods’), inhabited Western Europe in Miocene
times.

In Borneo the orang is generally known as the
mias, and under this name has been fully described
by Dr. A. R. Wallace. Dr. Wallace says that ‘he
walks deliberately along some of the larger branches
in the semi-erect attitude which the great length of
his arms and the shortness of his legs cause him
naturally to assume ; and the disproportion between
these limbs is increased by his walking on his
knuckles, not on the palm of the hand, as we should
do. Henever jumps or springs or seems to hurry him-
self, and yet manages to get along almost as quickly
as a person can run through the forest beneath,’

Like the gorilla and chimpanzee, he has the habit
of twisting together the smaller branches, so as to
make a platform on which to rest, and on one occa-
sion a large mias, which had not only been mortally
wounded, but had one of his arms broken by a rifle
bullet, succeeded in a wonderfully short time in con-
structing a platform which, besides concealing him
from sight, was strong enough to sustain the weight
of his heavy body after he was dead.