William Henry Furness III

[1] Furness made four expeditions to Southeast Asia and Oceania between 1895 and 1901, accompanied by Hiram M. Hiller, Jr. and Alfred C. Harrison, Jr.

[5] Rai was a currency that represented genuine labor – it had to be mined and carved on Palau, transported hundreds of miles by outrigger canoe or raft, and on Uap a team of twenty men was required to move the largest ones about.

[7] At home in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, he raised chimpanzees and orangutans, and experimented with teaching them rudimentary human speech:[8] If these animals have a language it is restricted to a very few sounds of a general emotional signification.

Articulate speech they have none and communication with one another is accomplished by vocal sounds to no greater extent than it is by dogs, with a growl, a whine, or a bark.

It reported that during a long trip to Japan, he had been heavily tattooed: "[A] splendid representation of the Goddess of Love covers his chest, and the God of Thunder illuminates his back.

He provided some of the illustrations for the book String Figures and How to Make Them (1906), by his sister, ethnologist Caroline Furness Jayne.

[17] He donated the land for the Helen Kate Furness Free Library in Wallingford, named for his mother.

"The Tattooing of a Kayan Married Woman," (c. 1896-98), photograph by Furness. Illustration from The Home-Life of Borneo Head-Hunters (1902).
Furness (second from right), with Hiram M. Hiller, Jr. (left), Lewis Etzel (seated), and Alfred C. Harrison, Jr. (right), photographed in Singapore , 1898. [ 2 ]
Furness in Yokohama , Japan in the 1890s
William Henry Furness III grave in Laurel Hill Cemetery
"Rai and Strings of Pearl-shell Money Presented to a Corpse at the Time of Burial," (1903), photograph by Furness. Illustration from Caroline Furness Jayne, String Figures (1906).