ISLANDS or CONTINENTAL OEIGIN. 191 



slowly from tlie depths of the ocean, elevated by the same force 

 which raises the neighbouring continent. And is not a like pheno- 

 menon accomplished on the coasts of Scandinavia ? Perhaps even 

 the large island of Anticosti, which extends in the Gulf of St Law- 

 rence over a length of more than 125 miles, is one of these slowly 

 elevated lands, for, according to the testimony of Prof. Yule Ilind, one 

 does not find in the granitic valleys of its rocks either serpents or 

 batrachians, as on the coasts of Labrador and Canada. If it is 

 really thus we could hardly admit that Anticosti has ever been in 

 communication with the continent of America, it must have emerged 

 from the waters like the islets of the Scandinavian coast-line. 



It has happened differently with regard to Great Britain and the 

 greater part of the islands which fringe the outline of the conti- 

 nent. It is certain that England formerly made a part of Eu- 

 rope. This is proved by the perfect agreement between the shores 

 on each side of the Straits of Dover;* it is also proved by the 

 fauna and the flora of the British Islands, in which all the animals 

 and all the wild flowers are colonists from the neighbouring world ; not 

 a single species belongs peculiarly as its own production to the soil 

 of old Albion, t In the same manner, Ireland has been separated 

 from Great Britain during the present geological period, and around 

 the two principal islands, a number of secondary fragments, the Isle 

 of Wight, Anglesea, and the Scilly Isles, have been similarly isolated 

 in the midst of the waves. 



A multitude of islands, situated, like England and Ireland, in the 

 neighbourhood of continents, are also simply fragments which the 

 waves, aided perhaps by the gradual sinking of the land, have de- 

 tached from the shores of the mainland. The magnificent Archi- 

 pelago of Sunda, the Moluccas, and the neighbouring islands of Aus- 

 tralia, present the most remarkable example of this breaking into 

 pieces of the continental masses. A channel, nearly 19 miles wide, 

 and more than 109 fathoms deep, passes between the two large islands 

 of Borneo and Celebes, and continuing in a southerly direction, 

 separates the two volcanic countries of Bali and Lombok, very near 

 to each other. This channel is the ancient strait which served 

 as the common limit to Asia and the southern continent. To the 

 west, Java, Borneo, Sumatra, the peninsula of Malacca, and Cam- 

 bodia, rest on a submarine plateau, which lies hardly 33 fathoms below 

 the surface of the waters : to the east, Sumbava, Flores, Timor, the 



* See in Vol. I. the section entitled, The First Ages, and above, p. 14. 

 + See below, the section entitled, The Earth and its Flora. 



