growth jungle on the ground, which has once been cultivated by
the Malays or Dyaks.

Now it seems probable to me that a wide extent of unbroken and
equally lofty virgin forest is necessary to the comfortable
existence of these animals. Such forests form their open country,
where they can roam in every direction with as much facility as
the Indian on the prairie, or the Arab on the desert, passing
from tree-top to tree-top without ever being obliged to descend
upon the earth. The elevated and the drier districts are more
frequented by man, more cut up by clearings and low second-growth
jungle--not adapted to its peculiar mode of progression, and
where it would therefore be more exposed to danger, and more
frequently obliged to descend upon the earth. There is probably
also a greater variety of fruit in the Mias district, the small
mountains which rise like islands out of it serving as gardens or
plantations of a sort, where the trees of the uplands are to be
found in the very midst of the swampy plains.

It is a singular and very interesting sight to watch a Mias
making his way leisurely through the forest. 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. He seems always to
choose those branches which intermingle with an adjoining tree,
on approaching which he stretches out his long arms, and seizing
the opposing boughs, grasps them together with both hands, seems
to try their strength, and then deliberately swings himself