In such a manner most of the earlier accounts of the habits of the
man-like Apes originated; and even now a good deal of what passes
current must be admitted to have no very safe foundation. The best
information we possess is that based almost wholly on direct European
testimony respecting the Gibbons; the next best evidence relates to
the Orangs; while our knowledge of the habits of the Chimpanzee and
the Gorilla stands much in need of support and enlargement by
additional testimony from instructed European eye-witnesses.

It will therefore be convenient in endeavoring to form a notion of
what we are justified in believing about these animals, to commence
with the best known man-like Apes, the Gibbons, and Orangs; and to
make use of the perfectly reliable information respecting them as a
sort of criterion of the probable truth or falsehood of assertions
respecting the others.

Of the Gibbons, half a dozen species are found scattered over the
Asiatic Islands, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and through Malacca, Siam,
Arracan, and an uncertain extent of Hindostan on the mainland of Asia.
The largest attain a few inches above three feet in height, from the
crown to the heel, so that they are shorter than the other man-like
Apes, while the slenderness of their bodies renders their mass far
smaller in proportion even to this diminished height.

Dr. Salomon Müller, an accomplished Dutch naturalist, who lived for
many years in the Eastern Archipelago, and to the result of whose
personal experience I shall frequently have occasion to refer, states
that the Gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of
the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the
fig-trees. All day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees, and