Indo-Malay Islands. 159 



Such a curious phenomenon as this can only be understood 

 by sujjposing that, subsequent to the separation of Java, Bor- 

 neo became almost entirely submerged, and on its re-elevation 

 was for a time connected with the Malay Peninsula and Su- 

 mati'a, but not with Java or Siam. Any geologist who knows 

 how strata have been contorted and tilted up, and how eleva- 

 tions and depressions must often have occurred alternately, 

 not once or twice only, but scores and even hundreds of times, 

 will have no difficulty m admitting that such changes as have 

 been here indicated are not in themselves improbable. The 

 existence of extensive coal-beds in Borneo and Sumatra, of 

 such recent origin that the leaves which abound in their shales 

 are scarcely distinguishable fi'om those of the forests which 

 now cover the country, proves that such changes of level act- 

 ually did take place ; and it is a matter of much interest, 

 both to the geologist and to the philosophic naturalist, to be 

 able to form some conception of the order of those changes, 

 and to understand how they may have resulted in the actual 

 distribution of animal life in these countries — a distribution 

 which often presents phenomena so strange and contradictory 

 that, without taking such changes into consideration, we are 

 unable even to imagine how they could have been brought 

 about. 



