HABITS.--The Orang-utan, the "forest-living Man" of the Malays, and the "Mias" of the Bornean natives, lives solitary in the leafy tops of the trees in the forests, except at the pairing season. A female is generally accompanied by one of her progeny, sometimes by two, the one always an infant, and the other a more or less grown but immature individual of a previous birth; for her young--of which she has only one at a birth--do not shift for themselves before they are approaching two years of age. At what age they attain maturity is unknown, but it is probably not before twelve to fifteen years. The infant clings by its arms to its mother when she is climbing, by grasping the hair of her arm-pits, while its legs embrace her sides above the hip. As already observed, the Orangs have none of the marvellous agility of the Gibbons. They are slow and deliberate in their movements; "surprisingly awkward and uncouth," according to Sir James Brooke; but their long and extremely powerful arms and hook-like fingers, which close with an amazing rigidity of grip, and their mobile legs and hand-like feet, enable them to lift and swing their bodies with great precision from branch to branch and tree to tree. "I have frequently seen them," says Hornaday, "swing along beneath the large limbs as a gymnast swings along a tight rope, reaching six feet at a stretch. When passing from one tree to another, the Orang reaches out and gathers in its grasp a number of small branches that he feels sure will sustain his weight, and then swings himself across." On the ground all this is very different. He walks very badly and unsteadily; he uses his arms as crutches, leaning his weight upon them with his fingers as already described, and {177}swings himself forward on them. On the ground the Orang does not move, according to Sir James Brooke, so fast as to preclude a man keeping up with him easily through a clear forest. "The very long arms, which, when he runs, are but little bent, raise the body of the Orang remarkably, so that he assumes much the posture of a very old man bent down by age, and making his way along by the help of a stick." (_Huxley._) The Orang, however, rarely comes to the ground of his own accord.