Meyer, Adolf Bernhard "The Rhinoceros in New Guinea," Nature, Vol. 11 (4 February 1875), p. 268

I am quite of your opinion that the occurrence of a rhinoceros in New Guinea is very seriously to be doubted (see NATURE, vol. xi. p. 248), but I beg leave to mention a report of a very large quadruped in New Guinea, which I got from the Papuans of the south coast of the Geelvinks Bay. When trying to cross the country from there to the south coast, opposite the Aru Islands,–in which I did not succeed, but only saw the sea-shore at a great distance from the height of a mountain chain (I afterwards succeeded in crossing the continent of New Guinea from the Geelvinks Bay more to the north, over to the Maclure Gulf),–and when hunting wild pigs along with the Papuans, they told me, without my questioning them, of a very large pig, as they called it, fixing its height on the stem of a tree at more than six feet. I could not get any other information from them, except that the beast was very rare, but they were quite precise in their assertion. I promised heaps of glass pearls and knives to him who would bring me something of that large animal, but none did. I cannot suppose, so far as my experience goes, that the Papuans are remarkably prone to lies; notwithstanding I seriously doubted the existence of such a large "pig;" and as the sons of that country are very superstitious, and see ghosts and absurd phenomena everywhere, I may just mention as an example, that when I shot, on the same hunting party, a specimen of Xanthomelus aureus, that most brilliant gold-orange Bird of Paradise, they said they could not kill this bird, because it would lighten and thunder when they did, I booked that report as an efflux of their lively imagination, though not without discussing in my diary the possibility and significance of the occurrence of a large quadruped in New Guinea.

It is true this statement does not strongly support Lieut. Smith's aperçu, but the one gains a grain by the other; I mean, the probability of the existence of a large quadruped in New Guinea increases a shadow.

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