On the Indian Archipelago. 411 



wings pale orange at the base, clouded with black at the tip ; 

 abdomen orange, slightly ringed with green ; legs orange, with 

 three greenish spots on the outside of the femora of the hind legs. 

 Length 1 inch 9 lines. 



A specimen found by Dr. Leichhardt was presented to the 

 British Museum by Sir Charles Lemon, Bart. ; the other was 

 found on the expedition of the Beagle, and is also in the British 

 Museum. 



XLIII. — On the Indian Archipelago.* 



The first and most general consideration, in a physical review of 

 the Archipelago, is its relation to the continent of Asia. In the 

 platform, on which the largest and most important lands are distri- 

 buted, we see a great root which the stupendous mass of Asia has 

 sent forth from its south-eastern side, and which, spreading far to 

 the south beneath the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and 

 there expanding and shooting up by its plutonic and volcanic energy, 

 has covered them, and marked its tract with innumerable islands. 

 That there is a real and not merely a fanciful connexion between 

 the Archipelago and Asia is demonstrable, although, when we en- 

 deavour to trace its history, we are soon lost in the region of specu- 

 lation. So obvious is this connexion that it has been a constant 

 source of excitement to the imagination, which, in the traditions of 

 the natives and in the hypotheses of Europeans, has sought its origin 

 in an earlier geographical unity. Certainly, if, in the progress of the 

 elevatory and depressing movements which the region is probably 

 undergoing even now, the land were raised but a little, we should 

 see shallow seas dried up, the mountain ranges of Sumatra, Borneo, 

 and Java become continental like those of the Peninsula, and great 

 rivers flowing not only in the Straits of Malacca, whose current early 

 navigators mistook for that of an inland stream, but through the 

 wide valley of the China Sea, and by the deep and narrow Strait of 

 Sunda into the Indian Ocean. Thus the unity would become geo- 

 graphical, which is now only geological. That the great platform 

 from which only mountains and hills rose above the sea level, till 

 the materials drawn from them by the rains were rolled out into 

 the present alluvial plains, is really an extension of the Asiatic mass, 

 appears evident from the facts, amongst many others which require 

 a separate geological paper for their discussion, and would be less 

 readily appreciated by the general reader, — that its direction, as a 

 whole, is that which a continuation of south-eastern Asia, under the 

 same plutonic action which produced it, would possess ; — the moun- 

 tain ranges which form the latter sink into it irregularly in the lines 

 of their longitudinal axes ; — in one zone, that of the Peninsula, the 

 connexion is an actual geographical one ; — the Peninsula is obviously 

 continued in the dense clusters of islands and rocks, stretching on the 



* From the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, for 

 July 1847. 



29* 



