Physical Geography. 25 



Borneo, and probably reaching as far as the present 100-fath- 

 om Une 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 Austraha and New Guinea as the Western Islands do to 

 Asia. It is well known that the natural productions of Aus- 

 tralia 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 quadrujDed which are met 

 with in every other part of the world. Instead of these, it has 

 Marsupials only, kangaroos and opossums, wombats and the 

 duck-billed 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 no where else 

 upon the globe. All these sti'iking peculiarities are found 

 also in those islands which form the Austro-Malayan division 

 of the Archipelago. 



The great contrast between the two divisions of the Archi- 

 pelago is nowhere so abruptly exhibited as on passing from 

 the island of Bali to that of Lombock, where the two regions 

 are in closest proximity. In Bali we have barbets, fruit- 

 thrushes, and woodpeckers ; on passing over to Lombock 

 these are seen no more, but we have abundance of cockatoos, 

 honeysuckers, and brush-turkeys, which are equally unknown 

 in Bali,' or any island further west. The strait is here fifteen 

 miles wide, so that Ave may pass in two houi's from one great 



' I was informed, however, that there were a few cockatoos at one spot on the 

 west of Bali, showing that the intermhigliiig of the productions of these islands 

 is now going on. 



