country, the orang-outang is red or reddish brown, closely resembling
the color of the Malays and Dyaks who live in the Bornean forests.
Though very large and powerful, it is a harmless creature, feeding on
fruit, and never attacking any other animal except in self-defense. A
full-grown male orang-outang is rather more than four feet high, but
with a body as large as that of a stout man, and with enormously long
and powerful arms.

Another group of true apes inhabit Asia and the larger Asiatic islands,
and are in some respects the most remarkable of the whole family. These
are the Gibbons, or long-armed apes, which are generally of small size
and of a gentle disposition, but possessing the most wonderful agility.
In these creatures the arms are as long as the body and legs together,
and are so powerful that a gibbon will hang for hours suspended from
a branch, or swing to and fro and then throw itself a great distance
through the air. The arms, in fact, completely take the place of the
legs for traveling. Instead of jumping from bough to bough and running
on the branches, like other apes and monkeys, the gibbons move along
while hanging suspended in the air, stretching their arms from bough to
bough, and thus going hand over hand as a very active sailor will climb
along a rope. The strength of their arms is, however, so prodigious,
and their hold so sure, that they often loose one hand before they have
caught a bough with the other, thus seeming almost to fly through the
air by a series of swinging leaps; and they travel among the network of
interlacing boughs a hundred feet above the earth with as much ease and
certainty as we walk or run upon level ground, and with even greater
speed. These little animals scarcely ever come down to the ground of
their own accord; but when obliged to do so they run along almost erect,
with their long arms swinging round and round, as if trying to find some
tree or other object to climb upon. They are the only apes who naturally