As An Instance,
Among The Islands Of Which I Am Now Speaking, It Is A Remarkable
Fact That Java Possesses Numerous Birds Which Never Pass Over To
Sumatra, Though They Are Separated By A Strait Only Fifteen Miles
Wide, And With Islands In Mid-Channel.
Java, in fact, possesses
more birds and insects peculiar to itself than either Sumatra or
Borneo, and this would
Indicate that it was earliest separated
from the continent; next in organic individuality is Borneo,
while Sumatra is so nearly identical in all its animal forms with
the peninsula of Malacca, that we may safely conclude it to have
been the most recently dismembered island.
The general result therefore, at which we arrive, is that the
great islands of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo resemble in their
natural productions the adjacent parts of the continent, almost
as much as such widely-separated districts could be expected to
do even if they still formed a part of Asia; and this close
resemblance, joined with the fact of the wide extent of sea which
separates them being so uniformly and remarkably shallow, and
lastly, the existence of the extensive range of volcanoes in
Sumatra and Java, which have poured out vast quantities of
subterranean matter and have built up extensive plateaux and
lofty mountain ranges, thus furnishing a vera causa for a
parallel line of subsidence - all lead irresistibly to the
conclusion that at a very recent geological epoch, the continent
of Asia extended far beyond its present limits in a south-
easterly direction, including the islands of Java, Sumatra, and
Borneo, and probably reaching as far as the present 100-fathom
line of soundings.
The Philippine Islands agree in many respects with Asia and the
other islands, but present some anomalies, which seem to indicate
that they were separated at an earlier period, and have since
been subject to many revolutions in their physical geography.
Turning our attention now to the remaining portion of the
Archipelago, we shall find that all the islands from Celebes and
Lombock eastward exhibit almost as close a resemblance to
Australia and New Guinea as the Western Islands do to Asia. It is
well known that the natural productions of Australia differ from
those of Asia more than those of any of the four ancient quarters
of the world differ from each other. Australia, in fact, stands
alone: it possesses no apes or monkeys, no cats or tigers,
wolves, bears, or hyenas; no deer or antelopes, sheep or oxen; no
elephant, horse, squirrel, or rabbit; none, in short, of those
familiar types of quadruped which are met with in every other
part of the world. Instead of these, it has Marsupials only:
kangaroos and opossums; wombats and the duckbilled Platypus. In
birds it is almost as peculiar. It has no woodpeckers and no
pheasants - families which exist in every other part of the
world; but instead of them it has the mound-making brush-turkeys,
the honeysuckers, the cockatoos, and the brush-tongued lories,
which are found nowhere else upon the globe.
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