

ISLANDS AND CONTINENTS. 



5. Geographical Terms Although these terms do not 

 always admit of rigorous definition, and their application is 

 often more or less arbitrary, they are nevertheless eminently 

 useful, and indeed essential to the acquisition of a general 

 knowledge of geography. 



6. Islands arc tracts of land surrounded by water. The term, 

 however, is generally limited to tracts of not very considerable 

 extent. When very small they are often called isles or islets. 



The distribution of islands is not uniform. In some parts they 

 are thickly clustered together within a limited extent of water. 

 A part of the sea thus sprinkled with islands is called an archi- 

 pelago,* a name which was first applied to the JEgxan Sea, which 

 separates Greece from Asia Minor, but which has been generalised 

 so as to signify any portion of the waters of the globe having a 

 like character. 



Islands are found for the most part in the immediate vicinity 

 of the coasts of much larger tracts of laud. In this case they are 

 evidently parts of such tracts, separated from them only by 

 valleys, so low that the sea flows through them. Islands, how- 

 ever, are also sometimes found in groups, sometimes ranged in 

 lines, and sometimes, though not frequently, rising singly and 

 isolated in the midst of the ocean. 



7. Continents are tracts surrounded by water, whose magni- 

 tude bears a considerable proportion to the entire surface of the 

 globe. 



It will be easily understood that this distinction between 

 islands and continents, depending only on their comparative 

 magnitudes, must be arbitrary, so long as no exact limit is 

 assigned at which a tract of land surrounded by water ceases to 

 be an island and becomes a continent. 



The tract in the southern hemisphere, called Australia, was 

 formerly classed as an island. More recently geographers give it 

 the title of a continent. 



Besides this, there are only two continents properly so called on 

 the globe, each of which has vast magnitude, the one lying in the 

 eastern, and the other in the western hemisphere. 



The Eastern Continent, sometimes called the great con- 

 tinent, includes Europe, Asia, and Africa, each of which has re- 

 ceived the name of continent, though the whole forms one continuous 

 tract of land, between any two points of which it is possible to 

 pass without crossing a sea. 



* Etymologists are not agreed upon the origin of this terra ; some sup- 

 posing it to be composed of apxbs (archos), chief, and Tre'Ac^os (pelagos), 

 a sea, and others of Afycuos (aigaios) and Trfaayos, the JEgsean Sea. 



K 2 131 



