Ch. XIV.] FORMER WIDE EXTENSION OF LAND. 269 



the place of the woodpeckers, barbets, trogons, and fruit 

 thrushes of the western islands, and the many mammals 

 belonging to Asiatic genera are no more seen. 



Mr. Wallace ascribes the present isolation of the is- 

 lands, and their separation from the adjoining continents, 

 to the submergence of the channels between them caused 

 by the abstraction of matter thrown out by the numerous 

 volcanoes ; but looking at the fact that at the time when 

 these islands were probably connected with the continents 

 of Asia on the one side and Australasia on the other, 

 namely, at the close of the pliocene period, England was 

 connected with the adjoining continents, Malta, as shown 

 by its fossil elephants, with Africa, the West Indies with 

 Yucatan and Venezuela, it seems to me more probable 

 that the cause was not a local one, but a general lowering 

 of the waters of the ocean all over the world to at least 

 one thousand feet, produced by the prodigious quantity 

 of water locked up in the frozen masses that covered a 

 great part of both hemispheres. 



The wide diffusion of the Malayan dialects over the 

 Pacific, reaching as far as the Sandwich Islands, shows 

 the great extension of that race in former times. On 

 numerous islands in Polynesia there are cyclopean ruins 

 utterly out of keeping with their present size and popu- 

 lation. Who can look at the pictures of little Easter 

 Island, with its gigantic images standing up in unwor- 

 shipped solitude, without feeling that that insignificant 

 islet could never have supported the race that reared the 

 monuments. But if that and other islands were once 

 hills overlooking peopled lowlands, the sense of incon- 

 gruity vanishes. We see the images, not gazing 

 gloomily over the ocean that narrowly circles them 



