excused if he shrinks from facing the dangers of the interior; if he
contents himself with stimulating the industry of the better seasoned
natives, and collecting and collating the more or less mythical reports
and traditions with which they are too ready to supply him.

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 endeavouring 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 main land 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 Muller, an accomplished Dutch naturalist, who lived for many