Notes on an infant maias
This document comprises two short notes published in JSBRAS Vol. 26 (1894): “Notes on an Infant Maias” by G. F. Haviland and “Stick-Insects destroying Orchids” by H. N. Ridley.
Summary
Haviland’s note records observations on an infant orang-utan (Maias) kept in Sarawak from July 1890 to October 1891, when it accidentally strangled itself on a chain. The notes track the animal’s dentition, weight gain, and behavioural habits—particularly its instinctive self-clinging when lifted—and compare the rate of teething to that of human children, concluding that the two need not be proportional (pp. 204–206). The infant’s skeleton was deposited in the Sarawak Museum.
Ridley’s accompanying note describes two species of Phasmidae (stick insects) identified as pests of cultivated orchids in Sarawak: a species of Pyloemenes near P. coronatus Westw. and Datames Oileus Westwood, the latter previously known only from a unique specimen in the British Museum. Both are noted as voracious leaf-eaters of epiphytic orchids (p. 204).